You've thought about it: what would happen if we made a hole through the center of the Earth, all the way to the other side? For starters, if you do this in the USA, the other side of the hole would end up in the southern Atlantic Ocean, not in China!
But what if you were to jump into this hole? Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains the sequence of events.
There is still something that bothers me about this hypothetical scenario. I'm not actually sure why you would 'fall' in the first place? Anyone can help me here?
On a related note, the other day I also heard on my local NPR station that if you were to send an object into orbit from the place you started your journey through the center of the earth at the same time you started falling, you would both reach the other side at exactly the same time, and back again, ad infinitum. Doesn't that tickle your mind?
.
That is so awesome! I love listening to that man speak; he makes science so much more fun than it could ever possibly be.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I understand your question about "why you would 'fall' in the first place". Are you scratching over the use of the word "fall" to describe the action of gravity pulling you or some other object down towards the magnetic center of the earth? Would it not be the same if you jumped off a cliff and "fell" to a most splatastic doom? Is this an issue of science, or merely semantical usage in science?
After thinking about it, the amusing thing is that after passing the center, you're not actually "falling", if we want to get the semantics right. Technically, you're being catapulted by the gravimetric pull from the "fall" at one end of the earth and "flying" upsidedown up to the other end of the earth, yes? Unto this, at least he had it right when he said he'd "fall" back down again if someone didn't catch him, semantically speaking that is.
Thanks, Dave. My problem is more with the science than with the semantics. If we make a hole to the other side of the planet, there would not be anything directly below you to pull you, right? All the forces that exert any pull on you would work at a diagonal, and given the nature of the hole, they would pull on you equally from all directions of the hole, so there would not be a privileged point to which you might be attracted, except perhaps the very center of all these forces, which might actually explain everything...
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, there is something odd about the idea of being pulled down to a place in which there is literally nothing, isn't there?
Couldn't it be possible to walk down that hole? Or would you necessarily float in the center, since the pull from all sides is equally strong?
I think I know the objective answer, but for some reason, I just don't feel it in my bones...
I think I understand what you're getting at Berto, but I think there is another matter that needs to be considered. Even if we strip away all the factors that would have prevented us from performing this experiment in the first place, wouldn't we still have to deal with all the dinosaurs and other strange monsters trying to eat us when we get to the center? When coming up with hypothetical situations like the one deGrasse Tyson has poked fun at, we might as well start writing fantastic 19th century fiction. Of course, we don't see deGrasse Tyson trying to get back by riding a raft on molten lava up a volcano shaft; silly!
ReplyDelete