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Asked by biggynorris123#carrotlove on 5 Nov 2024.
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Ruth Pegington answered on 5 Nov 2024:
We walk through atoms every day- they are all around us and we are made of them!
So try not to lose too much sleep about plummeting into the core of the earth.
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Edward Guy answered on 8 Nov 2024:
If there was a hole through the earth and you jumped into it, you would plummet at first, but eventually slow down and finally more or less stop. This is because the matter the earth is made of creates gravity and all of that matter is below your feet (so the whole earth is pulling you towards it.. we call that ‘towards’, ‘down’.). As you travel down towards the centre of the earth, there will be less and less matter ‘below’ you and more and more matter ‘above’ you until the amounts of matter above and below pull you with equal force (gravity). At that point, you will not experience any gravity because they both cancel out, and you will eventually stop falling.
However, if you do mean someone who can actually walk through atoms, then the matter that makes up you would need to be different from the matter that makes up atoms. Then, we are into a very weird area of physics at this point, and whether you would plummet anywhere would depend on whether the matter that makes up you that can pass through the matter of the earth, would be affected by gravity at all (this are, for example, some of the bits that atoms are made up of, that are not affected by gravity).
Comments
Andrew M commented on :
If you weren’t affected by the electromagnetic forces that prevent you falling through the floor, you’d have to wonder if you’d be affected sigificantly by gravity either. There are some particles, neutrinos, that don’t interact with matter through the electromagnetic or strong nuclear forces – they can pass straight through the Earth as if it wasn’t there. They do have a little mass, so are subject to gravity.
Tina-Jaine H commented on :
Great question. In a way, yes, and no. Like Ruth mentioned, we are walking through atoms (air) all the time. But air is a gas, and it moves easily around us, so we aren’t really going THROUGH the atoms, they are moving past us. Solid materials, like us, and the floor, exert a force on each other when they come in contact called normal reaction. Normal reaction is the large scale effect of the very small scale electromagnetic forces which hold atoms at a natural distance from each other, and stop one atom invading another’s space. If somehow you weren’t affected by normal reaction force or electromagnetic force, then yes in theory your atoms could pass through the atoms that make up the earth, because there is a lot of empty space in each atom. If the only force on you is gravity, then you would fall towards the centre of the earth. It’s hard to imagine what kind of human you would be if your atoms were not affected by electromagnetic forces. You’d fall apart for a start, because none of your chemical bonds would work!