If a tunnel was dug through the middle of the Earth from top to bottom and a person was to jump in the hole what would happen to that person?
Let’s just say for s__ts and giggles that the person was in a suit that would protect him from any harm and a tunnel built in this manner were possible. The answer is he would pop out the other side in 43 minutes and 47 seconds. Then, if he weren’t knocked out of the way he would fall back again in approximately the same amount of time. After a few hundred times he would probably wish he had not attempted this crazy trip. And no, I did not calculate this, I am not that smart. So, I dug a tunnel jumped in and had a stopwatch handy.
I’ve thought about this before. Forgetting for a moment that the Earth’s core is a little over room temperature, as well as omitting any other factors, since I’m sure that what you meant, here’s what I think would happen. You’d continue to accelerate until you pass the centre point of the Earth. From that point on, you should start to slow down the more you get away from the core. Then you should come out the hole on the other end, have a small amount of hangtime, and drop back down. Repeat the process. But if you take into account some slow down from air friction, you may not make it all the way back. This “hole” question, will get mixed answers because you must decide what forces you’ll acknowledge and which you’ll push aside.
If the tunnel were evacuated, then yes the person would reach roughly the same height above sea level as the point at which he or she jumped. However if it is not an evacuated tunnel then you have to allow for Drag.
Gravity is a result of all the Mass of the earth pulling you in one direction, however as you go down an ever increasing mass you pass by is starting to "pull" you up. As such, gravity falls to zero at the centre of the earth.
He would therefore accelerate to terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is when Gravitational force exerted on the object (or person) in freefall is equal to the drag of the air around.
The deeper one goes, the greater the pressure till you get to the centre. The greater the pressure, the greater the density of air and the greater the drag, although a higher temperature would make the density lower so not so straight forward.
However my guess is that the pressure is so great that the atmosphere would be so dense that drag is much greater than gravity to the extent that terminal velocity falls rapidly to zero.
As such the further down he would go, the terminal velocity will actually be less and less.
Assuming pressure is actually higher at that depth (due to greater atmospheric weight on him), terminal velocity would become less and less due to greater resistance and less gravity pull downwards.
Past the mid point it should reach a situation where due to the high density the person would overshoot the central point only by a small amount (relatively speaking) and slowly fall back to the centre.
therefore if he had a special suit enabling him to withstand pressure and temperature he would most definitely live and enjoy the ride of a lifetime.
Assuming 1,000USD per metre it would cost 7billion to find out the answer. 🙂
