Gravity at the center of the Earth

[Exoquatic]

Okay, lets say, theoretically that all of the magma, lava and molten rock in the center of the Earth is gone. It's just not there anymore, but the Earth still "works". If scientists dug a hole straight through the middle of the Earth, and YOU were selected to jump down the hole to see what happens, what do you think will happen when you get to the middle?

1. You'll be torn to pieces by the conflicting gravity in all angles
2. You'll be crushed into a ball by the cooperative force of gravity
3. You'll fall through to the other side
4. You'll be suspended in anti-gravity

What do you guys think? I personally think #2 is the most logical, but I'm no genius.

[thomasfn]

Directly at the center of the earth, the most influential mass is even all around so I guess you'd be suspended as you're being pulled in all directions. I'm not sure it'd be strong enough to pull you apart though.

[fenwick]

In the scenario you describe, you would travel past the center and head out toward the other side, then gravity would pull you back again, and you would probably spend a long time oscillating.

If you came to rest at the center of the earth, you would just be floating in place. The mass on all sides of you will be pulling on every particle with roughly the same amount of force... you would basically be in equilibrium, just like if you're in orbit.

[damnatus]

You will be crushed, not by gravity (which actually decreases with depth), but with air pressure. That is how I believe it works.

[Falubii]

This is pretty basic after some introductory physics. If you were inside a hollow, spherical shell of any kind you would experience no gravitation from that shell. It can be explained via [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss's_law_for_gravity"]this equation[/URL]. It states that the gravitational flux through a surface is proportional to the mass enclosed by that surface. When you're in the center of the hollow Earth, there is no mass enclosed by the Guassian surface where you are (or anywhere else inside the sphere for that matter), so the gravitational field is zero. The really interesting take home message here is that you don't have to be at the center of the shell. The gravitational field is zero at [B]all[/B] points in the shell.

If the Earth wasn't rotating, you evacuated all the air, and then you jumped through, you would emerge at the same gravitational potential (which means pretty much the same height) that you jumped from, just on the other side of the planet.

I found a video you might find interesting.

[video=youtube;jN-FfJKgis8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN-FfJKgis8[/video]

[JohnnyMo]

I've moved this to fast threads as it's not an opinion thread, but has an objective answer.

[Exoquatic]

[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44844250]I've moved this to fast threads as it's not an opinion thread, but has an objective answer.[/QUOTE]

Thanks.