Eli5 if there was a hole from one side to the other side of the earth, and you don’t have to deal with the heat are you going one side in other side out or are you going to be stuck in the middle due to gravity?
In: 0
If there were no air, and we ignore things like the Coriolis effect (which would make you hit the side of your pit as you fell), you’d fall through the center of the Earth, come up on the other side, and then swing back down. You’d act kind of like a spring or a pendulum (the force ends up proportional to your distance from the center, just as it would in a spring, at least if we treat the Earth as an idealized sphere of constant density).
If you were to start in the middle of the Earth then you would feel no gravity at all, at least if we treat the Earth as an idealized sphere. You’d be floating and could go in whatever direction you wanted for quite a ways before gravity ramped up enough to matter.
Latest Answers