4:03 am and the clock goes tick-tick-tick Musings

This being awake bit is a bit tedious 🙂

So I moved on from Super Powers and the question became “What’s on the opposite side of the earth from me”

Which it turns out is pretty easy to look up. http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm

For me that would be somewhere near Marbella in Spain. Nice.

Then, of course, the question became, what about I dig a tunnel to there?

Then, of course this leads to some other interesting thoughts and dilemmas and wonderings, as you do.

If you (I) dig straight down then for at least 50% of the journey you’re going downwards, you get to the middle and you have to start tunneling\digging upwards?, the floor (?) becomes the ceiling (?)

Does that mean the stuff you chip away at on the upwards bit falls out through the long tunnel hole you just made on the way down?

Or I guess that it just congregates at the middle point, neither up nor down.

Can you imagine if you’ve nearly completed you’re upwards leg and you chip a bit off and it flies out the starting point hole like a shot from a cannon. Can’t imagine getting a resource consent for that.

At some point too, halfway you’re top must become bottom and your bottom top? Perhaps not, if you were making a ‘floor’ to drive on then perhaps this would end up being the roof at the other end? But as it’s straight down, perhaps now, you’d just have to adjust the one/off ramp bit at either end.

Would you need brakes to slow you down or could you coast all the way through?

On the matter of digging to the other side I Came up with some fun #Facts about the Earth

Radius of the Earth is give or take 6,350 km, that’s about half way, depending on where you are though the Earth bulges a bit in the middle, like the most of us.
Diameter then is, give or take, 12,750km
Earth has a mantle (crust) that is 2,890 km thick
The Deepest Known trench is around 11 km deep – that would be the Mariana Trench.
Deepest Well ever drilled is 10.7km
Mt.Everest is 8,850 meters tall
Deepest cave is about 2km – Krubera Cave

So a few technical problems and other observations.

We’ve managed to drill less than 0.004% of the way into the Earths Crust?
We’ve found all the oil at this depth and much much less?
We can’t have used all the oil? IT must surely be just more difficult to get out?

I might try to think of something else.