Can you fall all the way through the Earth?

The simple answer is, theoretically, yes. First, let us ignore friction, the rotation of the earth, and other complications, and focus on the case of a hole or tunnel entering the earth at one point, going straight through its center, and coming back to the surface at the opposite side of the planet.
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What would happen if you fell all the way through the Earth?

Without air, there would be no air resistance. You would therefore accelerate to incredible speeds as you fall, reaching a maximum speed on the order of tens of thousands of kilometers per hour . You reach earth's center in a matter of minutes or hours instead of weeks.
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How long would it take to fall from one side of the Earth to the other?

In work published in the American Journal of Physics, Alexander Klotz found that the trip to the other side of the Earth should take about 38 minutes.
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What would happen if you drilled a hole through the Earth and jumped in?

If you jumped into the tunnel, you'd fall down towards the center of the Earth, accelerating constantly, thanks to gravity. By the time you reached the halfway point, after falling for 21 minutes, you'd be traveling at 28,000 kilometers per hour.
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Why can't we dig to the center of the Earth?

You can never "get" to the center of the Earth with any machine, because the pressure would be far too great. We can "see" down there indirectly by using the seismic waves from earthquakes that take place on the other side of the world. When there is a large earthquake, it puts a lot of energy into the Earth.
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What Would Happen If You Could Fall Through Earth



Why can't we fall off the Earth?

But the reason you won't fall off the Earth is because of the force of gravity. This pulls us towards the middle of the Earth, and keeps our feet firmly on the ground. Read more: Curious Kids: how does gravity pull things down to Earth? This is why we call the ground “below us” and the sky “above us”.
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What was found in the deepest hole on Earth?

Unexpectedly, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and even carbon dioxide (from microbes) were found all along the borehole.
  • There is no basalt under the continent's granite. This was a huge surprise. ...
  • There are fossils in granite 6,700 metres below the surface. How'd that happen?
  • Hell is deeper than 12,262 metres.
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Can you fall off the moon?

Although you can jump very high on the moon, you'll be happy to know that there's no need to worry about jumping all the way off into space. In fact, you'd need to be going very fast – more than 2 kilometres per second – to escape from the moon's surface.
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What does the Moon smell like?

After walking on the Moon astronauts hopped back into their lunar lander, bringing Moon dust with them. They were surprised, and perplexed, to find that it smelled like spent gunpowder.
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Can I jump off the Earth?

As of today, it is not possible to jump from space to earth. In fact, the highest recorded jump was performed from the stratosphere at 135,890ft (25.7 miles, 41.4 km) which is still 196,850ft (37.3 miles, 60 km) lower than space.
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Can an astronaut get lost in space?

A total of 18 people have lost their lives either while in space or in preparation for a space mission, in four separate incidents. Given the risks involved in space flight, this number is surprisingly … low. The two worst disasters both involved NASA's space shuttle.
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How far into the Earth have we gone?

Known as the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest hole ever dug reaches approximately 7.5 miles below the Earth's surface (or 12,262 meters), a depth that took about 20 years to reach.
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Why did they stop digging the deepest hole in the world?

Drilling was stopped in August 1994 at 8,578 metres (28,143 ft) of depth due to lack of funds and the well itself was mothballed. Because of higher-than-expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 °C (356 °F) instead of the expected 100 °C (212 °F), drilling deeper was deemed unfeasible.
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What would happen if we drilled into the mantle?

Even if engineers were to drill directly into a reservoir of molten magma, a volcanic eruption would be extremely unlikely. For one thing, drill holes are too narrow to transmit the explosive force of a volcanic eruption.
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Is it possible to feel the Earth spinning?

Since the Earth rotates at a near-constant speed (that is, it doesn't speed up or slow down in any way noticeable to us), we simply spin with it and don't feel a thing.
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Will Earth eventually fall into Sun?

Unless a rogue object passes through our Solar System and ejects the Earth, this inspiral will continue, eventually leading the Earth to fall into our Sun's stellar corpse when the Universe is some ten quadrillion times its current age.
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Why Earth is not pulled by Sun?

The earth is literally falling towards the sun under its immense gravity. So why don't we hit the sun and burn up? Fortunately for us, the earth has a lot of sideways momentum. Because of this sideways momentum, the earth is continually falling towards the sun and missing it.
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Can we dig to the mantle?

Around 10 km of drilling equipment will be needed to drill down and reach the Earth's mantle -- a 3,000 km-thick layer of slowly deforming rock. Around 10 km of drilling equipment will be needed to drill down and reach the Earth's mantle -- a 3,000 km-thick layer of slowly deforming rock.
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What is the deepest hole in the ocean?

The deepest blue hole in the world at 300.89 meters (987 feet) deep is in the South China Sea and is named the Dragon Hole, or Longdong. The second deepest blue hole in the world with underwater entrance at 202 metres (663 ft) is Dean's Blue Hole, located in a bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island, Bahamas.
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What is the deepest hole ever dug by hand?

The Woodingdean Well is 1,285 feet deep. It's the deepest hole that humans have dug by hand. 33 Chilean miners were trapped in a mine for about 2 months in 2010. The Burj Khalifa would go 2,722 feet below the surface.
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Can we reach Earth's core?

It's a long journey to the centre of the Earth, but getting there isn't just a hard slog for us humans. It's 6,371km (3,959 miles) to the centre of the Earth and the deepest hole ever drilled (the Kola Superdeep Borehole, now welded shut in the image above) was only 12km (7.5 miles) deep.
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How deep has a human gone in the ocean?

Vescovo's trip to the Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench, back in May, was said to be the deepest manned sea dive ever recorded, at 10,927 meters (35,853 feet).
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Can you dig to China?

Take a closer look at a globe: China is actually not antipodal to the United States. That would be impossible, since they're both in the Northern Hemisphere. If you dug a hole from anywhere in the lower 48 states straight through the center of the Earth, you'd actually come out… in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
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Do you age slower in space?

Scientists have recently observed for the first time that, on an epigenetic level, astronauts age more slowly during long-term simulated space travel than they would have if their feet had been planted on Planet Earth.
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Do you age in space?

Flying through outer space has dramatic effects on the body, and people in space experience aging at a faster rate than people on Earth.
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