• Question: what would happen if you mix if you dug straight threw the earth

    Asked by anon-174833 to Alex, Carl, Hayley, Melanie, Tim, Yewande on 18 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Seeney

      Alex Seeney answered on 18 Jun 2018:

      Well, it’s a bit of a long way down! First you’d get to the Earth’s crust, that’s about 35-70 kilometres thick. After that, you’d get to about 2,900 kilometres of the Earth’s mantle. Then there’s the outer core, which is about the same size as the planet Mars – this is liquid iron and is about as hot as the surface of the sun (5,500 degrees centigrade!) After that, a solid inner core that’s about the same size as the moon.

      Safe to say, you’d need to pretty high-tech equipment to get you there in one piece!

    • Photo: Carl Barford

      Carl Barford answered on 20 Jun 2018:

      The truth is you can’t, as Alex explains below. The tunnel would collapse long before you got there

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