Subject:
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Re: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 2 Oct 2002 23:13:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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754 times
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David Koudys wrote:
> I often wondered what would happen if we were to drill an 8 foot hole
> straight through the planet (of course, this idea assumes the core of the
> earth to be a nice room temperature, not molten rock...) and if wer were to
> jump down said hole--would we go past the center of the planet, slow down on
> the way to the other surface and just basically bounce back and forth thru
> the tunnel until we came to rest, free floating, at the exact center of the
> planet?
I've wondered this in the past also. If the planet were not rotating, I
think the answer would be that your analysis is correct. Note that you
would be in a zero-G environment (or close to it) at the center assuming
the Earth is close to an evenly dense sphere (or at least each onion
skin layer is of uniform density) since basic Physics says that at a
point inside a sphere of uniform density, only that mass contained in
the sphere centered at the whole sphere's center of gravity and having a
radius equal to the distance the point is from the center of gravity is
involved in determining the gravitational attraction, the "layer"
outside that radius basically cancels itself out.
With a rotating sphere like Earth, I think the problem is that you will
crash into the side of the hole since you will retain the velocity of
the surface, yet as you go down, the velocity of a point in the hole is
lower.
Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing"
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| (...) Never thought about the rotation--there was an H.G. Wells story about a guy that was granted a wish and his was for the earth to stop spinning--turns out that when the wish was mentioned, the earth stopped instantly anad everything that wasn't (...) (22 years ago, 3-Oct-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: John Leo's opinion of "The West Wing"
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| (...) <snip> intellectual posturor! (...) This is what I meant by Spock phrasing it better--he said something like 'on a planet with positive gravity'--it's ST:TOS--when was the last time I caught one of those episodes? ;) I don't have to witness (...) (22 years ago, 2-Oct-02, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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