July 03, 2008

• Cool! I came out south of Chy's laundry room this time. ...as opposed to Mr. Knickerbocker's laundry room (earlier, not as cool as this tunnel-through-the-Earth thread).
• Also southwest of Australia... (more west... like right near the Indian Ocean...
• If you're in the United States, you need to go to very specific spots in northeast Montana or southeast Colorado in order to come up on dry land.
• Or Alaska or Hawaii...
• It's weird how so little of earth has earth on the other side of it.
• In the ocean between Australia and Antarctica. If you want to dig through to China, you need to start in Chile!
• Blrbblrblrb..Indian Ocean...blrblblb
• With the exception of the Arctic/Antarctic lands, and South America/Souteast Asia, there is surprisingly little land-to-land matchups on this odd planet.
• Oceans cover 71 per cent of the planet's surface - not surprising so many of us are coming up spluttering, really.
• You'd think we'd own more boats.
• *attempts to fill in hole before feet get wet*
• yup. I come out half way from Madagascar to the French Antarctica Islands....otherwise known as the middle of the ocean :)
• I've done this before (right now I should be getting ready for school) and I come up in Spain. I like that.
• Bermuda islands! Fucking awesome!
• Why doesn't the south pole come out at the north pole?
• ||Why doesn't the south pole come out at the north pole? Magnets.
• Wow, I don't remember that other thread at all. I was going to make a comment about how I've been waiting for a tunnel-through-the-earth app for near ten years. I guess that's wrong.
• I am in China already. Do I still need to dig a hole?
• Am I right in thinking it's a US thing that holes are supposed to go through to China? I think I've only come across it in US sources. Certainly when I were a lad people always talked about digging holes to Australia. (Though typically some smartarse would say 'It's New Zealand that's actually on the other side of the world' and then sometimes a smarterarse would say 'Well really it's Antipodes Island' and on one occasion a smartestarse said that even Antipodes Island wasn't actually... anyway.)
• Apropos of nothing, there's a nice discussion of digging holes through to other points on the Earth in The Annotated Alice. Gardner discusses (as I recall) how one could dig a tunnel between any two points on the globe, and, in a frictionless environment, allow gravity to pull you halfway, and then your momentum carry you up the other half, pendulum-like. The odd part was that every journey, no matter how distant the points, would take 36 minutes. Again, this is what I remember. It's been years since I've read the book, and I leave it to those more knowledgeable than I to correct me, a poor Arts grad.
• I am too lazy to search for it, but right here on MoFi I had a brief discussion a couple years back about such hole digging with Nunia. She claimed that any such hole would collapse inward due to gravity or some such nonsense. These geologists, they think they know everything.
• Yes, what nonsense. We all know thanks to Dante that Satan occupies the Earth's centre, imprisoned in solid ice.
• Are you thinking of the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel?
• Satan on ice? Uh, wrong! There's a cave, then this river, then a giant ocean with dinosaurs in it and giant mushrooms all around the edges, all as proven by the esteemed Dr. Verne ages ago. Pfft. Solid ice. As if.
• C'mon dude... a cave, then this river, then a giant ocean with dinosaurs in it and giant mushrooms all around the edges (snorts) How could there be a river down there? Your account is most egregiously lacking in credibility.
• Of course there's a river. There's oceans on top, and there's an ocean underneath. If there's a hole going from the top to the bottom -- which there is -- then one's gonna drain into the other. That's how gravity works. How else did all that water get down there to form the ocean? It pooled down there from the river. Duh!
• Good point well made.
• Yeah, so who's talking about gravity now, huh? Huh? Geologist!
• What? There's gravity in your stupid theory, too -- a theory dating from the DARK AGES, I might add. Dante and Virgil were walking around in your faerie tale. They didn't fucking float... And if there's gravity -- which you've tacitly admitted -- and there's a hole going from the outside to the inside -- which you've also admitted -- then stuff's gonna fall from the outside to the inside, must likely water, which means an ocean. The one thing you're not going to have is a giant pit. "Geologist"? J'ACCUSE!
• Sorry, I got carried away there - I'm just jealous of your easy fluency with scientific terms.
• Oh, that’s allright. It happens to everyone, ipso facto. In fact, just the other day, I was talking to my sister a mari usque ad mare, and the same thing happened to her, pro rata, you know. And I’d tell you the same thing I told her: e pluribus unum. Res ipsa loquitor. In loco parentis. Whatever, dude. No worries, or as Plato said, cave canem.
• Never argue with a lawyer. It just encourages them.
• That reminds me -- if you could email me your address so I can send you your account. KTHX.
• The great thing about digging a hole to China is that if you then, right next to it, dig a second hole to China, you take take all of the dirt you collected digging the first hole and drop it into the second hole. THEN, you take all of the dirt you collected digging the second hole and drop it into the first hole, and presto: All of the dirt is in China, and you're rid of one, huge problem.
• Whenever Mr. Whiskers gets carried away in the litterbox, I ask him if he's diggin' to China. Now I have to ask him if he's diggin' to a spot off the southwest coast of Australia. It just doesn't have the same ring.
• I want to see a map/globe that shows land as land if and only if the the point on the opposite side of the world is also land. It'd be nice if it also showed water as water if and only if the opposite side of the world also was water. Everything else should show up as black or something.
• It would be easy to make, I reckon. But I am lazy.
• Yes, what nonsense. We all know thanks to Dante that Satan occupies the Earth's centre, imprisoned in solid ice. posted by Plegmund Are you thinking of the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel? posted by KevvinSevvin The devil is in the A-W Burrito Tunnel? Ohhhh Kay. Am I right in thinking it's a US thing that holes are supposed to go through to China? I think I've only come across it in US sources. Pleggy: I did a cursory phrase source and can't find anything (except that Thoreau once used this) but I'm going to guess that Americans use China, because of the exotic nature of the culture and difference in the people, as well as the actual time it takes to get there. Sure, travel time to Australia is long, but the culture difference isn't so shocking. I'm thinkin' if you're doing that much digging, you want to come out somewhere with really strange customs. Actually, if you dug to China, you might just come out in the ocean, according to this map.
• Sounds plausible, BH - thanks.
• Those aren't commas in that post, they are little shovels.
• ,,,,,,,,,
• Nobody sez when you dig to China that you to go through the center of the earth. Probably you'd want to go around anyway what with all the lava and magnets.
• That's complete tosh. The centre of the Earth is hollow. You actually need to take a parachute.
• A round earth is just a theory.
• I'm pretty sure if you got to the centre of the earth you'd just hover in midair, spinning slowly end over end. FOREVER.
• Some hold that we are in fact walking around on the inside of a hollow sphere, with the sun floating in the centre. But these people are unable to explain the whereabouts of Satan.
• He's in the Naval Observatory.