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Physicist Alexander Klotz of McGill University calculated that falling through a hole drilled through the Earth would take 38 minutes and 11 seconds, slightly faster than the previous calculation of 42 minutes and 12 seconds. However, drilling a hole through the Earth is impossible, and the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia only reached a depth of 7.5 miles, just 0.1% of the Earth’s diameter. Bugs Bunny famously dug such a hole and emerged in China, but in reality, a hole dug by North America would end up in the Indian Ocean.
Let’s say you could drill a hole through the Earth. In theory, how long would it take to jump down the hole, fall through the Earth, and come out the other side? This question has been a staple of introductory physics lessons ever since the answer — 42 minutes and 12 seconds — was first calculated in 1966. In 2015, however, physicist Alexander Klotz of McGill University in Montreal provided a slightly faster calculation. In an article published in the March 2015 issue of the American Journal of Physics, Klotz made several hypotheses about the effects of air resistance and gravitational pull in such a “gravity tunnel.” He concluded that this mythical thrill ride would actually take 38 minutes and 11 seconds. Of course, this mathematical dilemma will never be solved with real data. Drilling a hole through the Earth, which is 7,918 miles (12,742 kilometers) in diameter, would be an impossible task.
Learn more about gravity tunnels:
Between 1970 and 1989, Soviet engineers dug the Kola Superdeep Borehole in an attempt to penetrate the earth’s crust as deep as possible. In those two decades, they drilled to a depth of 7.5 miles (12 kilometers), which is just 0.1 percent of the Earth’s diameter.
Cartoon fans of a certain age will remember when Bugs Bunny dug such a hole and emerged in China. Indeed, a hole dug by North America would end up in the Indian Ocean.
If you were able to dig a hole through the center of the Earth and jump in, when you get to the bottom, the gravitational pull of the Earth would pull you back towards the beginning, throwing you back and forth like a pendulum.
