Center of the earth

Factual Questions
1

What exactly would it be like at the exact center of the earth, besides hot?

2

What I’m really wondering is what would happen if you drilled a hole straight through the earth, running through the center, and jumped in.

Here’s what I think will happen:

  1. You jump in, and start accelerating downward at g
  2. Gradually, this acceleration approaches 0 as you near the center
  3. You pass through the center, your acceleration is 0 but you moving at an insanely high velocity.
  4. You continue to “fall”, but now you experience negative acceleration
  5. The acceleration reaches -g as you exit the hole on the opposite side.
  6. Your velocity becomes 0. For a split second, you hover in mid-air
  7. Then you fall back into the hole, and repeat steps 1-7

Does that sound plausible? (Well, assuming you don’t die.)

3

It’d be solid, so you’d have to find a way around that…not to mention that you’d have the weight of the world on your shoulders…

4

That is, in fact, exactly what would happen, (assuming the hole you dug was perfectly straight and completely free of any air, so you’d have no resistance as you fell.) Cecil has answered it here:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_165.html

5

Actually, if there were a room down there for you to stay in, you’d be weightless… that room will have to counter some huge pressures and high temperatures though… other than that, nothing really special will happen…

6

feeling - high pressure, hot.
sight - bright. (surprisingly, but remember that hot stuff glows…like embers in a campfire) I forget what color it would be, but it relates to the temperature.
sound - don’t know
taste - iron-y
smell - don’t know
emotional - lonely

7

Cecil didn’t point out that the hole would not have to go through the centre of the earth. A straight hole from (say) London to New York would allow the same effect, assuming the “floor” was frictionless. I’m guessing the time taken to fall “all the way through” would be the same for the “straight down” case as for the oblique case. Oh, and a minor nitpick; you wouldn’t emerge from the hole at the South Pole, as it’s too high above sea level. Going the other way, you would meet the ocean pouring in (and flashing into steam) through the hole at the North Pole.