h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well,look's like Nostradamus was wrong then?

HEY it's only the 4th july not the 7th, u evil wrong-datey-person and Nostradamus never predicted the end of the world neway, he wrote everything in 16th Century french which can be very easily twisted, and there was an apostrophe-' one of them in the wrong place, it's amazing what an apostrophe in the wrong place can do 2 a prediction in 16th century french!!

I thought the Academie Française had some deal going whereby they would keep the language as it was in the 17th century?
Does anyone know anything about this super-conjunction coming up in about a year's time? Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and maybe Mercury are all going to be lined up. I suppose it'll depend on the relative states the planets are in concerning their perigee and apogee but some reckon that tidal effects and so forth might be significant enough to cause some problems. Nasa don't seem to be saying much and Patrick Moore is silent on the matter.

All I can tell you about all the planets being lined up and ready to tear the Earth apart with their combined gravitational forces is that it happened also on March 10th 1991. I remember that, because it was my Dad's 70th birthday. Nothing earth-shattering happened. Apart from anything else it shows that, just because your 70, it isn't the End of the World!

If you were to bore a tunnel right through the centre of the Earth, connecting, say, Croydon with Auckland and then you jumped down it,
what would happen??

This was in New Scientist a while back. Assuming that you've found a way round the lava that would shoot up, the high temperature in the middle and the problem air resitance would cause, if the distance from the centre of gravity to the exit at either end was as near to equal as makes no difference one could jump into the hole, shoot through (accelerating until the midpoint was reached and thereafter decelerating) and pop out the other end with just enough energy left to come out of the hole before you begin the return journey. Assuming that no-one's standing there ready to push you back in or that no sheep have fallen down to beget an interesting organic version of a Newton's cradle halfway down, you'd be able to grab the edge of the hole and pull yourself out. There'd be a few problems related to the time taken for passage, the rotation of the earth, the fact that you'd have to hang directly above the hole before jumping in rather than jumping from the side if you didn't want to be scraping the edges and the fact that you'd come out upside down but there's nothing that couldn't be overcome by cooperation between men and heavenly bodies of goodwill.

Far out! I'd assumed I would start falling back before I reached the other side and would continue plunging up and down, avoiding sheep and losing momentum, until the sheep and I find ourselves stranded at the Earths core and are forced to take the stairs.

yeah, well, the other thing you have to ignore is the pull to either side perpindicular to the direction of the hole. Seeing as the hole isn't from point-on-the-equator to a point diametrically opposite and not from pole to pole there'd be a slight oblique imbalance in the attraction from side to side given the slightly greater circumference of the earth at the equator. There's also the attraction from either end of the hole, which couldn't actually be in the same direction as the hole but which would be so slightly oblique as to make no difference - that'd be pulling you back the further down you went but also pulling you forward. It's be this that evens you out and makes your velocity zero when you reach the other side. Given that air resistance is being ignored and you'd be accelerating until you reached The Centre of The Earth, you'd be going quite fast. Anyone know the diameter of the planet? I'll just go and check.

The circumferance at the equator is 40 076 km or 24 902 mi if that's any help.

The radius (I assume at the equator) is 6,378km. It'll take me a bit to remember all the mechanics equations as I haven't used them for five years almost to the day. I've also been distracted by a site with many nice things to look at.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/cities.html

Thought! digging the hole would be the quickest way out of Croydon.
Would it be possible to direct the hole to other places by using the Earths spin for example.

This is irrelevant. Everyone knows you cant get through the cehtre of the Earth and out the other side. for one thing the hole belongs to eurotunnel and you couldnt afford the ticket , and for another even if you could you would be grabbed by the trolls in the middle!! (Trolls is Sixteenth Century French for.....)

Are you sure it wouldn't be owned by London underground? Can you imagine the morning rush hour journey to Auckland if it were?

Unfortunately due to the commencement of the project (scheduled to last 3 years) occurring during the tenure of the last Whig Goverment the tunnel was not nationalised and was floated on the stock market. Dartford Crossing PLC almost won the contract but their plan to also circumnavigate the globe with a bridge for the return journey was considered too adventurous. Besides it was thought that a car tunnel would be too dangerous leading to uncontrolled return of convicts to these fair isles, and the existing crooks runing the country did not want the competition (P.S yes it is a deliberate typo I've got a chellspecker!)

Ouch, Sweetie, that hurt. I'll have another drink.

Not quite! From what I've heard, he was using a calander that was a month behind ours, so we've all got another month to live!

Are they really our thoughts ?
If you consider that our planet is mereley a recreation of a former identical planet which was constructed ( and prematurely destroyed ) with the sole purpose of answering the Ultimate Question of Life the Universe and Everything then surely any thoughts that we might think we have are not of our own creation either .
Therefore i present to you the fact that all we know to be true is in actual fact false .

If this is a recreation then nobody/thing/intergalatic being/mouse would even think of rebuilding Croydon even for an experiment in digging holes from it to the other side of the planet. Whoops there we go in a puff of logic.

Where did Croydon come from anyway? It's not made of human hands. Nobody would have been deranged enough to actually sit down and plan, and then get up and build such a place, surely?

If explorers had found leopards after both camels and giraffes would they have called them camelogiraffes?