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What would happen if you dug a hole straight through the Earth and then jumped in?
Would you get stuck in the middle?
Would you bounce back and forth forever?
Would you go accelerating out the other side?
So what happens is you jump in and you start accelerating down towards the center due to the force of gravity from all of the Earth beneath you.
You're falling faster and faster and faster, but as you get towards the center, there's less mass pulling you down.
So when you reach the center after about 21 minutes, the Earth is going to be pulling you equally in all directions.
Now, if you teleported in there, you'd be stuck forever.
But lucky for you, in this scenario, you're traveling over 11 km per second or 25,000 miles an hour.
So you're just going straight on through and you'd slow down as you reach the other side, finally coming to a stop.
Unless someone catches you there, you're going right on back.
So you're bouncing back and forth basically forever.
In real life, the deepest anyone has ever dug is a third of the way through the crust in the 1970s and we're making a longer video all about it, so subscribe.
What if I dug a hole through the Earth and jumped in?
Would I get stuck in the middle? Would I bounce from side to side?
In real life, the deepest anyone has ever dug is .2% of the way to the center. And yet, we know a surprising amount about what’s down below our feet...
If you like optimistic science and tech stories, follow for more of our show Huge If True!
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