How it would feel at the Earth's core. Like outer space?

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Fort56
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04 Jun 2009, 10:15 pm

If someone could somehow go to the Earth's core, would it feel like they were in outer space? With zero gravity.



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04 Jun 2009, 11:25 pm

Hardly similar, you would probably be crushed by the pressure there.



Fort56
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04 Jun 2009, 11:37 pm

CloudWalker wrote:
Hardly similar, you would probably be crushed by the pressure there.


But if you were somehow shielded from that pressure, would you feel the same as you would in outer space?



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04 Jun 2009, 11:39 pm

Yes, it would feel exactly like being in outer space, in that you would be dead.


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04 Jun 2009, 11:39 pm

earth is hollow and you would be floating around at the center. however, there's a large ball of light in the center and i don't know what it's made of (gas?) so you probably couldn't go there anyway. inner earth's crust has only one third the amount of gravity as outer earth, so it would be fun to bounce around there.. kinda like the moon.



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04 Jun 2009, 11:41 pm

Blufaeri wrote:
earth is hollow and you would be floating around at the center. however, there's a large ball of light in the center and i don't know what it's made of (gas?) so you probably couldn't go there anyway. inner earth's crust has only one third the amount of gravity as outer earth, so it would be fun to bounce around there.. kinda like the moon.

Please, please tell me you are joking.


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04 Jun 2009, 11:55 pm

Fort56 wrote:
If someone could somehow go to the Earth's core, would it feel like they were in outer space? With zero gravity.


Well, suppose that there was magically a hollow sphere at the center, where you weren't crushed by the matter or burnt up by the heat, then the answer would be yes and no. Yes in the sense that, in space, there's essentially a perfect vacuum (save for the random stray particles floating around), so all sorts of gasses will start shooting out of your body, giving you the sense of exploding (most likely). While at the center of the magic hollow sphere, you'd have gravity pulling you in all directions, which could rip you apart. So it would be a similar effect, but without the boiling blood. I'm pretty sure you'd be too busy thinking things like "OH F*** ME I'M DYING" to notice the difference, though.



introspective
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05 Jun 2009, 12:25 am

DNForrest wrote:
While at the center of the magic hollow sphere, you'd have gravity pulling you in all directions, which could rip you apart.


Each of your particles would be pulled in every direction. Because this means that the forces would be balanced, it would have no effect on you (so, weightless).



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05 Jun 2009, 1:02 am

It will be zero only if you are at the dead center of earth. As long as you move slightly away from the center, gravity comes back. It may not be much, but the effect would still be different from outer space. Also, as your body is not a point, different parts of your body would experience slightly different gravity force, again not really like outer space.



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05 Jun 2009, 1:03 am

introspective wrote:
DNForrest wrote:
While at the center of the magic hollow sphere, you'd have gravity pulling you in all directions, which could rip you apart.


Each of your particles would be pulled in every direction. Because this means that the forces would be balanced, it would have no effect on you (so, weightless).


Ah yeah, that's right, for some reason I was thinking in terms of black hole-level gravitational fields for where the different placement of particles does make a difference, but yet Earth-level for whether or not one would be ripped apart. Odd.



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05 Jun 2009, 1:27 am

well, the temperature would be so hot (thousands of degrees), and pressures so dense (I think the earth weighs a few sextillion tons, so all of that would be on one part of you), you'd hardly have time to feel anything...in milliseconds you'd be a carbon-based iimpurity in the molten nickel-iron that's already there...



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05 Jun 2009, 2:18 am

DNForrest wrote:
Fort56 wrote:
If someone could somehow go to the Earth's core, would it feel like they were in outer space? With zero gravity.


Well, suppose that there was magically a hollow sphere at the center, where you weren't crushed by the matter or burnt up by the heat, then the answer would be yes and no. Yes in the sense that, in space, there's essentially a perfect vacuum (save for the random stray particles floating around), so all sorts of gasses will start shooting out of your body, giving you the sense of exploding (most likely). While at the center of the magic hollow sphere, you'd have gravity pulling you in all directions, which could rip you apart. So it would be a similar effect, but without the boiling blood. I'm pretty sure you'd be too busy thinking things like "OH F*** ME I'M DYING" to notice the difference, though.


How about no?

Explosive decompression is a myth. You will experience the bends though.

Being at the exact center of a hollow world, not considering the heat, would be like balancing a marble on an inverted bowl. Just about impossible. You would not be pulled apart. Earths gravity is not that strong.


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DNForrest
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05 Jun 2009, 2:41 am

Fuzzy wrote:
How about no?

Explosive decompression is a myth. You will experience the bends though.

Being at the exact center of a hollow world, not considering the heat, would be like balancing a marble on an inverted bowl. Just about impossible. You would not be pulled apart. Earths gravity is not that strong.


I didn't say explosive decompression, I said gasses escaping to give the sense of exploding (depends on the body composition and rate of pressure drop). And I already corrected myself on the gravity bit.



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05 Jun 2009, 3:18 am

Still nope.

If you were to normalize to 2 atmospheres under water, (200 000 pa and ~10 meters) and you quickly rise back to the surface, you do not vent gases through your skin. The differential to break the skin barrier is greater than 1 atmosphere. Same deal with going from 1 atmosphere in a space ship to the vacuum of space.

What does happen is that you vent gasses through your lung and nasal tissue, as well as your tear ducts. You also might break your ear drums.

But it doesnt happen at any speed approaching a description of explosive.

Here it is nicely explained. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/at ... 0291.shtml


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05 Jun 2009, 6:28 am

Purely from the maths/physics, should you have any size spherical hole inside (and at the centre of) a spherical body, the effects due to gravity are uniform and zero throughout the entire hole.

In particular, If you could construct a rather large bathysphere, that could maintain a normal atmosphere for you, and you descended in it to the centre of the Earth (somehow :)), then you would find yourself in a zero gravity state, throughout your vessel.

The other extreme... should you hollow out the entire of the interior of a planet, leaving just a thin (just inches or a few miles, say) shell - again, the entire interior would have zero gravity. You could not "stand on the interior surface", say. Although if would appear that you are close to lots of matter, the net effect of the rest of the mass "over your head" exactly cancels the attraction of the closer parts.


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05 Jun 2009, 6:48 am

lau wrote:
The other extreme... should you hollow out the entire of the interior of a planet, leaving just a thin (just inches or a few miles, say) shell - again, the entire interior would have zero gravity. You could not "stand on the interior surface", say. Although if would appear that you are close to lots of matter, the net effect of the rest of the mass "over your head" exactly cancels the attraction of the closer parts.


Furthermore, if Earth was actually hollow, the Coriolis effect of the spinning planet still wouldn't be sufficient enough to provide the amount of gravity that we have due to the lack of mass. Earths' atmosphere would be less than that of Mars, as the lack of sufficient gravity would cause any gasses present on the surface to dissipate into outer space, and the surface would be just as barren and devoid of life as the moon in practically all areas of the planet aside from perhaps the equatorial regions where the Coriolis effect would be greatest. Then again, nothing would stop the osmotic flow of atmosphere from the equatorial region to the polar regions unless there were parallel mountain ranges running along both sides of the equator. -- So much for the hollow earth theory. :roll:


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