What is Digg?Sponsored by Best Buy
Meet Keith: Best Buy Employee and Possible Singing Sensation. view!
www.youtube.com/bestbuy - One employee proves he has the chops and the passion to star in Best Buy’s holiday campaign.
120 Comments
- df12, on 10/12/2007, -1/+62All we need is some Unobtainium....
- lo0ol, on 10/12/2007, -2/+62"The vehicle would accelerate to a maximum velocity of about 17,670 miles per hour before beginning to decelerate"
That's a pretty fast number, pretty much bordering on "I really don't understand how fast that is because it's *really* fast". Too bad it's a little too hot down there to make this a feasible possibility for the forseeable future.
And on a related topic: this story keeps reminding me of the movie "The Core", which is really a terrible movie. - archlich, on 10/12/2007, -0/+53Well remember that it's easier to send a man to the moon than it is to send a man to the bottom of the ocean.
I'm reminded of the quote:
Professor Farnsworth: Dear Lord, that's over 150 atmospheres of pressure.
Fry: How many atmospheres can this ship withstand?
Professor Farnsworth: Well it's a spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Futurama - totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3614 hours or 42 minutes, they'll still force you to take off your ***** shoes before boarding.
- BobTGoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36Gentlemen....the core of the earth...has stopped spinning!
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+32@feanor
Well la-tee-dah! Not everyone has the power of the grail at their disposal, Mr. Fancy-Pants! - Feanor, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35What are you talking about?? I have one in my back yard right now. My family has been working on it since 1686...we bored into London at the temple for the Knights Templar in 1972...been working great ever since.
- totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30"a vehicle with sufficiently reduced friction"...
i see an AstroGlide sponsorship deal in the making. - stevetures, on 10/12/2007, -2/+29I think 'fastastically bad' is a great descriptor. 'Hilariously inaccurate and thus watchable in a b-movie vein' also comes to mind.
- cbrian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2742 = The point of life, the universe, and everything.
and
42 = The time it would take to get from Hawaii to New York in a gravity train
therefor
The point of life, the universe, and everything is to get from Hawaii to New York in a gravity train.
My logic might be a little off. - Necoras, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24Hardly. Velocity has no effect on your body. It's the acceleration. You're moving thousands of miles an hour, both on the earth hurtling around the sun, and again on the earth spinning. But try to survive 10+ g's of acceleration...
- daborg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20I can guarantee you that the acceleration would never go above 1 g. :-p
- 350Zed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21@rotten777
Velocity has no effect* on the human body. You're confusing velocity with ACCELERATION.
[* Before anyone pipes in about the relativistic time effects theoretically-experienced at velocities approaching the speed of light, I'm not interested in flipping to that chapter just now, thanks. ;-) ] - Plopfish, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2342
So the question, to the answer, of The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything is how many minutes it will take future test subjects (humans) to get to any point in the world. - chimona, on 10/12/2007, -5/+26The best part about The Core is when someone screams out "BUT THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" then Stanley Tucci says, "But, what if it wasn't?" it was a fantastic way of setting up the suspension of disbelief. And who cares if the science doesn't make sense? neither does the science in Star Wars.
- GravyTrain6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18When I first read the heading of this story, I thought it was going to be about me.
- Idealistic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Or just perform a simple half cork screw on the way there. Common sense ftw!
- Mrkamikaze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16The Core one of the best Comedies of this decade.
- VaporBro, on 10/26/2007, -1/+14THIS NEWS IS OVER 400 YEARS OLD! NO DIGG
great read though. omgkthxbye - jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16And here we arrive in china. BOOM! everyone falls on thier head lol >
- gnjack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13We had a really fun physics teacher for a while, and we watched The Core, and we had to slate off the scientific errors in the film, and we got edible rewards for doing so :D
That was a brilliant few lessons, I wish they could still be like that. - soloride, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Of course paying the toll that Satan would charge would be a pain in the ass.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12And that's just underwater, where it's more or less easy to maintain. There's no way digging tunnels would work on that scale. The cost would be more than any single nation could afford.
- alienz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11If the water in a toilet bowl changes directions when you change hemispheres, what happens if someone flushes the toilet right at the middle point?
These are serious questions people! - myheaditches, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I've got it! Magma!
- digid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10They were showing something similar on Discovery about a super tunnel that would be slightly submerged at the ocean surface held up by its own buoyancy and anchored to the ocean floor. They estimate travel of up to 4000mph on trains traveling on magnets.. Travel between New York and London would be a mere 45 mins.
- bobothn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9it would only take 42 minutes if that was figured out on a notepad in a restaurant.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Misread as Gravy Train. Imagine my disappointment
- LoungeActx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12You know what is funny is that say you got into this train in New York, and were on your way to a country on the other side of the world, you'd arrive upside down. They'd have to figure out a way to flip the passenger compartment for people to exit. It's kind of an amusing thought if you think about it.
- jmferris, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12If the tunnel is nearly frictionless, you would just have to make sure that the whole vehicle was bottom-heavy. The heaviest part of the vehicle would always be oriented to the center of the planet.
That is pretty neat to think about, though... - pureliquidhw, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12Unatainium and pink floyd laser shows would make it work.
//edit
I couldn't stop laughing when the birds went crazy. - sedition, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If someone ever comes up with a material that withstands the pressure of the combined weight of the entire planet earth (as it would need to the center of the earth).. I think we'd have some other more interesting uses for it.
- dWhisper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7By my understanding, we already have nanotube that's strong enough, mass production and deployment is the key. They've developed servicable climbing module, even if it's in early prototype, but the length of ribbon needed is ungodly, and the cost/benefit behind it doesn't apply.
And after reading this, the space elevator is far, far more likely. When you dive into the science behind the elevator, it's actually pretty sound, if somewhat fantastic. We have a much better grasp on the nature of gravity and matter than we did when it first came about, and that's the crux of the issue. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@dwhisper...sorry the comic book guy in me can't let this pass..."The Core was a model member of the science community next to going back in time by spinning the Earth backwards."
Superman didn't go back in time by spinning the Earth backwards. It span backwards in the movie because Superman was going back in time. - dWhisper, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10It was amazingly stupid science, and anything with Hillary Swank is like six hours in a dentist chair, but the movie itself wasn't exactly bad, per se.
I gave up on seeing science in movies somewhere around the first time I saw Superman. After all, when you have a bulletproof guy that can fly and shoot lasers out his eyes, and that, my friends, is not the most unbelieveable thing in the movie... well, you've taken a turn. The Core was a model member of the science community next to going back in time by spinning the Earth backwards. - R3yDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Forget the heat shielding and we are talking about the worlds longest oven. Fresh trans-global cuisine- we are talking food cooked while it's on the way to your house, I'll wait 42 minutes for that.
- awm4, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Why would we need this when we can just teleport.
http://www.digg.com/general_sciences/Your_grandkids_children_will_be_able_to_teleport - davidswelt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Guys, we're talking about acceleration by gravity. That's called falling. What do you experience when accelerating in free fall? Zero G. Speed will be highest at the center point, acceleration lowest. After that, you will decelerate - I wouldn't be surprised if that would happen in zero G, too. Think of low G as the feeling you get when a plane (suddenly) levels off, coming from a climb. You decelerate vertically, and gravity and (downwards) acceleration counter-act each other. (Free fall is the opposite - you accelerate vertically, and again, the downwards acceleration and gravity counteract each other.)
So, no 10 G for anyone doing this. That said, even low G (never mind negative G) regularly make me slightly sick in sail-planes... and I'm not the only one. Also, astronauts seem to get "space sick", too - for days.
OK, now I'm actually gonna check out the article (for what it's worth). - gnjack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Ok, Thanks.
A vital and frankly pretty cool chunk of knowledge I was missing out on there. - amenic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5hahaha .. god I love this site - you guys crack me the hell up something fierce.
- errer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yeah, you can derive the APPROXIMATION from the "big scary equation." Look at the chart they have that shows the deviation from the small angle approximation. Notice how the deviation asymptotes to infinity at 180 degrees?
- archlich, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@gnjack No no no, that's the point. The object is essentially in free fall. It makes no difference where the mass is, no one side will be "pulled" towards the earth more than the other. This is the same reason raindrops are actually spheres and not, well, drops.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You'd be in freefall the entire way. You wouldn't feel a thing, except your lunch coming up.
- Mitchl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5In the alternative, all we need to come up with is once we have the space elevator on the carbon nanotube ribbon to the orbiting station, we put additional stations in space with carbon nanotube bungees and then bungee at different agles across the globe!
- pureliquidhw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sly Stallone and Ozzy Ozborne in Daylight 2: Crazy Train
- Krusz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I am more interested in Evacuated Tube Transport. http://www.et3.com/
- errer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Haha, ok, pointless to argue with you...you can't even read a graph. :)
- gnjack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@ archlich
Yes, but if it was top heavy, it would want to turn upside down, he is not talking about how it would effect the speed it falls.
Also, if it is bottom heavy, as soon as it passes the centre, wouldnt the direction of the force of gravity flip so it would become top heavy? (as well as all of the passengers / cargo would be on the ceiling) - jbowman90, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The trip would never exceed 1g of acceleration. You have to remember potentials. At the surface of the earth, acceleration is 9.8m/s^2. Beyond the earth's surface, g decreases like 1/r^2. Inside the earth's surface, g would decrease linearly from 9.8m/s^2 (1g) at the surface to 0 at the center. I wonder if trip time that was calculated took this linear variation with g into account.
- errer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"the math for small degrees is the same as it is for large degrees"
Um, no? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_%28mathematics%29 -
Show 51 - 100 of 120 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is