Earths inside

SOURCE: Socratic.org

Digging a hole through the center of Earth is impossible with current technology and for many other reasons. However, let’s do a thought experiment with this post.

The first issue you would face would be finding a way to pass through over 20 miles of continental crust and then nearly 2,000 miles of the earth’s mantle. After that, you’d have to travel through a ball of liquid iron about half the size of Earth, burning at temperatures as hot as the sun’s surface (10,000° F). Assuming somehow you made it through all of that, you would still have to drill through a moon-sized inner core and then make it through a ball of liquid in the very center of the earth. To put this all into perspective, the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia is the deepest hole in the world as of August 2020 at about 7.5 miles deep. After about 30 years or drilling, the project was halted due to the tools not being able to operate in the 350° F temperatures.

Back to the thought experiment. Let’s assume some type of super technology existed that would protect you from the extreme heat and allow you to drill through hundreds of miles of crust and mantle. Assuming all of that was possible, the air and air pressure would kill you. Let’s keep going and assume this super technology being used could also protect you from the vapors and withstand the extreme air pressure. Your next problem would be Earth’s rotation. Because Earth is continuously spinning, you would be moving sideways at about 1,700 miles per hour (MPH) and die by splatting into one of the sides. Let’s keep going with the thought experiment and assume you could also overcome that. After about 40 minutes of jumping into the original hole, you would eventually come out of the hole on the other side and then fall back into that same hole again. You would then travel back through Earth and come back out of the hole that you originally jumped into. This would go on indefinitely as you yo-yo back and forth through the two holes.

Of course, this is all theoretical, and I’m sure there would be quite a few more problems.

INTERESTING FACTS
  1. Earth travels through space at about 1.3 million MPH.
  2. The first photo of Earth from space was taken in 1946.
  3. Earth’s rotation doesn’t take exactly 24 hours, it takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.
  4. There are over 22,000 man-made objects in space.
INTERESTING VIDEO

INTERESTING REFERENCES
  1. HowStuffWorks.com – What would happen if I drilled a tunnel through the center of the Earth and jumped into it?
  2. Futurism.com – What Would Happen if You Jumped Through the Center of the Earth?
  3. OurPlnt.com – Amazing facts about Earth
  4. WTAMU.edu – What would happen if you fell into a hole that went through the center of the earth?

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