Scientists Calculate How Long It Would Take You To Fall Through The Earth If You Put A Hole In Either End

You might be surprised to learn just how long it would take to tunnel straight through Earth if there was a hole from one side to the other.

Travel has totally transformed in recent decades. 

With a few taps on our phones or clicks on a computer, we can book a trip that takes us from one end of the globe to the other, which is pretty awesome when you think about it.

But even with all this progress, there's one wild ride we haven't figured out yet. Instead of flying over the Earth to get to the other side, what if we could just go straight through it?

We still haven’t worked out how to take one of the most mind blowing journey. Credit: HyperPhysics

Of course, a bunch of pretty big obstacles stand in the way of that dream, not least the fact that it's, well, pretty much impossible.

The pressure at the Earth's core would be unbearable for us humans, and let's not even start on how scorching the inner core is.

Then there's the tiny issue of building the most ambitious and pricey travel system ever imagined. Yeah, that throws a wrench in the plans too.

But, just for fun, scientists have crunched the numbers to figure out how long it would take to make this impossible journey, if, you know, we magically solved all those other problems.

Without diving too deep into the nitty-gritty science stuff (because it does get a bit heady), it's actually quite a thrilling thought.

According to the boffins over at HyperPhysics, a person would need about 42 minutes to travel from one end of the Earth to the other.

"Your initial acceleration would be the surface acceleration of gravity but the acceleration would be progressively smaller as you approached the center," they explain.

According to calculations done by those behind the HyperPhysics educational website, it would take a person roughly 42 minutes. Credit: Heritage Space/Heritage Images via Getty Images

And they continue, "Your weight would be zero as you flew through the center of the Earth."

They also say, "For our hypothetical journey we will assume the Earth to be of uniform density and neglect air friction and the high temperature of this trip."

"It would cause the trans-Earth traveler to oscillate back and forth through the center of the Earth like a mass bobbing up and down on a spring."

So, if you were to somehow take this wild ride, you'd want to make sure you grab onto something once you pop out the other side.

Otherwise, you'd start falling back toward the center and then zoom back up the other side.

"The traveler would pop up on the opposite side of the Earth after a little more than 42 minutes," HyperPhysics wraps it up.

"But unless he or she grabs something to hold on, they will fall back for a return journey and continue to oscillate with a round-trip time of 84.5 minutes."

Sounds like a pretty intense trip, right?

I think you might enjoy a video of this entire thing from minutephysics, it goes into more detail about the math and stuff: