What Would Happen If We Just Kept Digging?

If you dug a straight hole from your backyard to the other side of the Earth, you would eventually fall out on the opposite side after about 42 minutes.

Imagine an Earth-sized apple with a tiny worm at its core. That center point is where gravity pulls hardest because all the rock around you tugs equally in every direction. The pull cancels itself out. If you stood there, you would float like a feather in a calm room. As you start walking down toward that center, the ground beneath your feet feels heavier, but you are also closer to the source of the pull.

You would be weightless at the very bottom.

It gets hotter as you go deeper. Near your kitchen floor, it is about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. But deep underground, the temperature rises steadily. If you kept digging past the crust into the mantle and core, the heat would build up like an oven that never turns off. Eventually, the rock melts into a thick, glowing liquid called magma. You might need special cooling gear to survive, but if your hole stayed open and didn’t collapse, you could walk on the inner core, which is a solid ball of iron so heavy it crushes everything above it.

Once you reach the center, you do not stay there forever. Gravity still works in reverse! As you move past the middle toward the other side of the planet, the ground "falls up" toward your feet again. You would swing back and forth like a child on a playground swing. If air resistance was low enough, you would oscillate endlessly until friction slowed you down and brought you to a gentle stop at the center once more. It is a beautiful, natural pendulum motion that lasts for billions of years unless something stops it.