this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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The earth spins about its axis. Since the pit has no bottom and you can’t control your lateral position while falling, the earth is going to move around you, meaning the sides of the pit are going to collide with you.
When that happens, you’re effectively falling down against sandpaper with no way to stop.
By this logic, the Earth would move at supersonic speed below me whenever I jump. When I start falling, I keep my momentum with the surface of the Earth.
Anyway, of course there will be lateral movement because it's hard to control one's aerodynamics precisely enough. But theoretically, if you had an indestructible smooth pipe and there was no drag, you could safely travel to the other side of the world in under an hour.
Your momentum is equal to the product of your mass and velocity. Earth’s gravitational acceleration is roughly 9.8m/s squared, so your momentum increases with time as you are pulled towards the core.
While you are falling down, the earth will start to continue to move in the direction it’s going, and since you are no longer being held down onto it, you will start slowly drifting towards the sides of the pit, where eventually you will make contact, unable to move yourself away from the sides. This will likely happen after you’ve reached significant downward velocity.
Anyway, we’re talking about a pit with no bottom, in a cartoon that’s making a joke.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force
The pipe would need to curve for it to work
I was going to say this. At terminal velocity, contact with the sides can be lethal.
I could’ve mentioned that the mass of all of the earth surrounding the pit would get pushed out into the pit the further toward the core it gets, but after a point, we’re talking about a cartoon.
there is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, I think a Soviet Union experiment to find out how far they could drill, over 12 KM down (which is not quite through the earth's crust).
Not bottomless, but far enough to get that sense of bottomlessness. Not very wide, though.