Mind Blown

If there was a hole right through the Earth,it would take 42 minutes to go from one side to the other.

If you've ever wondered just how far we humans have drilled down into our planet's surface, then try imagining the globe as an apple. It might surprise you that we haven't even sunk our teeth through the skin yet. Bizarrely, some people from the Soviet Union once started digging to see how deep a hole they could make. After almost two decades of constant work, they'd only managed to go down 12 kilometres that's around 0.1% of the way through the planet.

Creating a hole all the way through Earth would be impossible. The tunnel itself would be12,756 kilometres long, and all of the material in its path would need to be displaced. That would make a very impressive pile. Not only would the tunnel be long but inside it would be hotter than - well anything we can imagine. The temperature at Earth's core is a blazing 6000°C!

Imagine for one minute that the Soviets had succeeded in digging their crazy hole. Somehow that hole would go all the way through Earth, ignoring the enormous distance and the heat, not to mention other barriers, like the friction of the drilling process and the rotation of Earth itself.

What would happen if someone was to fall through it? Theoretically, you'd enter the tunnel at one point, fall straight through the centre and then resurface on the opposite side of the planet. Easy-peasy. You'd start falling with zero speed, which would rapidly build to a maximum of 28,440 km/hour as you hit the Earth's core. You'd then slow back to zero as you reached the other side. Much like the way a pendulum swings down and up again.

The total travel time for this theoretical journey from one side of the globe to the other would be a tidy 42 minutes. That's less time than the average television drama episode.