How long does it take exactly to fall through the center of the Earth, from one end to another? According to a recently publish journal, it’ll take you 38 minutes.
In layman’s terms, one would fall at different speeds through different densities. If you do decide to fall through, your acceleration would be highest immediately after you fall but will gradually slow down as you near the core.
The gravity increases as you go deeper towards the dense core, to about 110 per cent of its surface value and would gradually slow you down as you pass through the core. One can fall at a maximum speed of 18,000 mph when they initially jump.
To get a realistic mass distribution for Earth, Alexander Klotz, a graduate student in physics at McGill University in Canada, relied on the Preliminary Reference Earth Model, which is based on seismic data.
It traces Earth’s density from about less than 1,000 kilogrammes per cubic meter at the surface to roughly 13,000 kilogrammes per cubic meter at the centre of the core 6,371 kilometres below, including a dramatic jump at the edge of the outer core, 3,500 kilometres from the centre.
Klotz found that he got almost exactly the same answer – 38 minutes flat – if he simply assumed that the force of gravity remained constant and equal to the value at the surface as an object plummeted towards the center.
But as Alexander Klotz, a graduate student at McGill University in Canada, came up with the new calculations, he took into consideration how Earth’s density changes layer by layer. And as a result, the gravitational speed at which we would fall through each layer changed too.
To know about more nerdy details about the fall through, watch this video.