Where in the Earth would you be the heaviest?Standing on the surface of Earth, or in orbit around th
Where in the Earth would you be the heaviest?Standing on the surface of Earth, or in orbit around the Earth, to a first approximation the gravity of the planet is no different whether the planet has a lot of mass right at the center or has mass evenly distributed throughout, or has all its mass right at the surface. However, if you moved down through the planet, the gravity will change. If all Earth’s mass was at the center, you’d find that gravity increased as you approached the center, then dropped right as you reached it. If most of Earth’s mass was near the surface, you’d find gravity gradually decreased as you moved towards the center.However, Earth is none of these end-members, it doesn’t have a neutron star at its core, it doesn’t have a high-density crust, and it isn’t homogeneous by mass. Instead, Earth has a core made of very high density, compressed iron and nickel – its density is more than 4x that of heavy rocks from the surface.If you could descend towards the core, you’re getting closer to the highest density part of the Earth, but there’s more mass above you with its own gravity. How do those 2 effects balance? You can see on this chart.As you descend through the mantle, you find that Earth’s gravity subtly increases – by less than 10%, but enough that you’re a few kilograms heavier at the bottom of the mantle than at the top. Getting closer to the core is slightly more important than the mass of all the rocks above you.Once you get into the core, as you descend into the molten outer core, gravity does the opposite, it drops. Even the liquid outer core is so dense that as you descend, the mass outside is becoming more important than getting closer to the inner core, so gravity drops. Finally, if you could get all the way to the center of the Earth, gravity would go to 0 as you’re surrounded by equal mass on all sides.So, take your current weight, figure out what 10% of that is, and add that – you’ve basically calculated how much you’d weigh if you were standing at the Core-Mantle Boundary.-JBBImage credit:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gravimetry#/media/File:Earth-G-force.png -- source link
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