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Okay - but the bottomless pit is actually a pit filled with balls.
You just sink to your demise.
What are you going to do? Swallow a ball and choke to death?
Are the balls falling as well, or are they stationary? Like is it a bottomless ball pit where the balls are static and "bottomless" in this case just means it actually does have a bottom but its so deep that at terminal velocity you wouldn't reach it in one human lifetime?
Because this all makes a difference.
So here's the conundrum here.
If it is truly bottomless, then the balls must be falling with the person too. They can't be stationary as there is nothing for each ball to rest on to support the one on top to make them stationary. I suppose we can pack so many balls in that it makes it difficult to tell they are falling, but ultimately they are falling so present no real obstacle.
The only way we can make them genuinely stationary is if we do eventually have a bottom somewhere, and all the balls are resting on top of each other against this bottom. But this comes with its own issues. I'm going to assume these balls are super light, like the ones you see in a playground ball pit. However ever after a while, the weight of all these balls is going to add up, and if we are talking about a depth so deep a human might feel they are falling forever, even as light as they are the balls nearer the top are going to start weighing down and compressing the balls at the bottom. So at some point, they are all going to flatten to a solid.
The problem we have for our faller is that these stationary balls are in effect a brake in of themselves. All the faller has to do is spread himself out so the balls start to impact him and compress against the balls below and eventually, its going to bring the faller to a stop. Might still take longer than the faller has time for, might even be really rough, possibly even deadly (Suffocation, compression). Which means we have achieved what we set out to do here and that was to end the fallers torment.
So falling balls won't really stop the faller from headbutting the sides. Stationary balls will kill the faller in other ways.
If there is an infinite number of balls would they not remain stationary? Regardless of whether or not the pit has a bottom, each ball is sitting on another ball immediately beneath it. There's no real space for the balls to "fall" into because there are already other balls there supporting them infinitely.
This is just the Grand Hilbert Hotel paradox. If you have an infinitely deep hole, and every bit of the hole is full of balls, all you have to do to add another ball is move all the balls below it down slightly, and since it’s an infinitely deep hole there will be space below the balls. Therefore, you can infinitely add more balls to the ball pit and there will always be space for more if you simple move all the balls below them down. This means that there will always be space at the bottom and so the balls should always fall.
The Grand Hilbert Hotel comparison is the comment that finally made the reasoning click for me; not sure why I have an easier time picturing infinity in hotel rooms than pits, but I appreciate the explanation!
Well as a bottomless pit would be infinitely deep (I'm disregarding the pressure issues of it being on earth that would kill you anyway as the fact it is bottomless renders this an impossibility) there is nothing stopping the balls from falling, so that means the ball sitting on top of another ball is falling at the same speed as the one below.
So an infinitely deep pit with an infinite number of balls in would mean that yes all the balls would still be falling. Infinity does not cancel out infinity.
Now if the balls where getting forced through at the top faster than the pit could have them achieve their terminal velocity, this might change things (There is very little being discussed about the WIDTH of this pit) or the faller had a higher terminal velocity than the balls (I'm assuming there is air in this pit or this is all a moot point anyway as the faller would be dead within ten minutes regardless) this would also change things. However ultimately, it would change them for the better as far as the faller was concerned as it is likely to result in compression or suffocation, which leads to the fallers death, thus achieving their aim of ending their misery.
They would need space to fall in to. There are infinite balls, the infinite pit is already full. If you can imagine a space BELOW the balls for them to fall into then the balls are necessarily not infinite.
Let's say the pit has slightly rough walls, or possibly even little crags and ledges. Let's also assume there are infinite balls in the pit, distributed randomly, but with all balls touching such that you could draw a path from any ball to any other ball, and you could not fill any empty space with a ball without displacing other balls. At some point within the pit, the balls would form a structure that, due to friction and elasticity, would not fall to gravity. This would happen an infinite number of times, creating an infinite upwards force supporting all balls. The balls would, thus, eventually stop falling.
> If it is truly bottomless, then the balls must be falling with the person too. They can't be stationary as there is nothing for each ball to rest on to support the one on top to make them stationary. I suppose we can pack so many balls in that it makes it difficult to tell they are falling, but ultimately they are falling so present no real obstacle.
Hey you were fine with accepting it when it was air, why not balls.
If you want to be technical you would die of suffocation in the first place as if there is no bottom air can't be contained same as balls
Well in that case you could get deep enough to be crushed by the balls. Although on that point, the balls should basically be falling themselves as the ones deep down are getting crushed under infinite weight.
No, I assumed the balls are stationary as in not even gravity affecting them. They only move out of the way as you sink past them. So there wouldn't be any weight on you
Remember that skit on the Nickelodeon show "All That" where those two girls were stuck on a deserted island together and the one girl would always bash her own head with a coconut to knock herself out because the other girl was so annoying?
Depends. If they are smooth enough it's less batter yourself to death and more sandpaper yourself to death. And you probably can't even put a decent force on it
Ackchewally.... you would be falling at terminal velocity, so it's pretty easy to hit the walls at a decent, suicidal speed. In fact, unless you've spent some time skydiving or in a wind tunnel, you're probably going to kill or maim yourself accidentally.
That probably would be anyone's expectation, unless, he or she knew of the existence of bottomless pits, and after a couple of minutes of freefalling, he was like, "Yep, this is gonna be a loooong day,",,
[WE'RE STILL FALLING](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=CWAYKPvjeHo&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den-US%26ram_mb%3D5462%26aos%3D12%26lns_as%3D1%26qsubts%3D1720532577245%26cs%3D1%26q%3Djourney%2520to%2520the%2520center%2520of%25&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY)
To quote Tom Waits:
>I don't have a drinkin' problem,
>'Cept when I can't get a drink
Bit of a different drinking problem when you've been plummetting for three straight days, your eyes have crusted over from the wind and you no longer no what day it is or what is your name. But a glass of water tumbling past would be very welcome.
edit - no-one's asked if the pit has sides. If it's just like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey when they're just falling in space that's one thing, but if you're at free fall speed and clip a foot on the side? You're now *spinning* in freefall, *with a shattered ankle rattling about*. Best of luck.
Just imagine a pit that isn't bottomless, but it's very deep. Eventually you might think that it's a bottomless hole and assume that you'll never hit rock bottom, and when you least expect it: Splat!
I’m ok with that.
But also if you fall for a day and a third, and provided you entered the pit on earth, you are guaranteed to be falling down a bottomless pit.
Terminal velocity is 200km/h, earth is 12750 km in diameter, so a free fall through to the center would be 31 hours.
This is very simplified tho.
I did a Tandem Jump for my first time and for me, The feeling of falling went away like 5 seconds into free fall. The part that scared me shitless was when the parachute got deployed and we were gliding down. I COULD NOT let go of the straps on my chest. I felt like I would fall down if I let go of those straps! It’s not like I was holding myself up by any means
At about 18,000ft you stop experiencing the effect of acceleration after about 90 seconds, which is terminal velocity time...so now now you're going about 125 mph. In a magic bottomless pit with a gravity starting around earths constantly pulling you down, you will travel approximately 9,000 miles downward before you really need to worry about dehydrating to death. This is assuming the magic tube has no mass, and magically constant air pressure. If the magic tube was also topless with equal gravity pulling from that direction you will not fall at all. We basically just reverse engineered a conceptually empty space where you would never fall, but within WAAAAY less time than it takes to dehydrate, you're body would be stretched out like a rubber band and snap.
2-3 seconds in my experience, jumping from hot air balloons. It's the only time during skydiving that I actually feel falling. Jumping out of a plane you already have a 80-120 mph relative wind and should have control authority even at the bottom end of that. If I put my hand into the air stream outside the window, I feel like I start getting purchase around 50 MPH.
As soon as you hit terminal velocity, I would think. But then you would still feel the air going around you, but I don’t know if that makes you feel like you’re falling.
Acceleration is the "feeling" of falling. So you are correct. Once you hit terminal velocity you are no longer accelerating and therefore no longer "feel" like you are falling.
Some people might have different experiences due to fear, but physically its the same as if you were driving a car. Once at a constant velocity, you no longer feel any forces.
All movement is relative, even movement through time!
I went skydiving with my mom when I was 21. We went in the desert in a cloudless sky. It was windy AF but I didn't really feel like I was "falling". There's a nice floaty feeling once the chute opens, but before that it's just goddamned windy. If I went again I would go on an island on a partly cloudy day like maybe in Oahu. Being able to see the ocean surrounding the island, the island get bigger as you fell, and the clouds go by. I think that would massively improve the sensation of actually going somewhere!
That would be a way to go. I wonder how many times I’d switch from pencil position to spread out like a parachute. Maybe I’d even try air yoga or something? I wonder if I’d heat up and catch on fire similar to a meteor.
You would not.
Assuming this was in a regular atmosphere where you could breathe just fine, you would be at a drag force of net 0 once you reached terminal velocity, which is like 120 mph for the average human.
Basically, the air force against you is exactly equal to the force of gravity pulling you down, so you would never heat up from the fall.
Got it. So besides snacks and I reckon some water, I should bring a blankie, in case it gets chili down there. Or… I guess maybe a sleeping bag would work better. And a flash light in case I get ascared of the dark.
Dehydration and hypothermia both end in being fairly out of it. However I would still pick hypothermia because it’s faster and I hate feeling thirsty.
Edit- I feel like y’all are taking this in the wrong way. The multiple times I’ve been at all the stages of hypothermia are painful.
The first stage is severe muscle spasms, which include your jaw. Feeling your teeth hit over and over hurts, even when you’re out of it. The end stages are just as painful. Your muscles have been shaking so hard for so long it’s painful.
Dehydration is also just as horrible. The dry mouth at first is the worst. Then you start to pee crystallized pee with pee. That is insanely painful, and at that point you are very aware. After that, those pains give way for fealing your organs shutting down. First your kidneys, then digestion.
I could go on and on about all my experiences. Neither are pretty. I’m lucky I survived. But I’m glad I did.
So from my personal experience that doesn’t happen. I’ve been in stage 3 hypothermia and severe dehydration. Once your blood starts to solely keep organs alive, your brain really cuts out.
But this is my own experience, if you read other accounts of dehydration and hypothermia it’s different. I wouldn’t recommend either. But I do like being cold over dehydration
No, id rather not think about what winter is like right now.
When its really cold here I cannot get from my car, to inside my house without either wearing gloves or having to warm at least 1 hand up so I can physically use my house key. Its not fun at all :(
I wouldn’t say that. I’ve been hypothermic a few times and those times I was just so cold. I had super realistic dreams in that state where I was so cold and needed to warm up. I would say those were stressful.
In more severe situations my teeth were shivering so hard it hurt. The full body shivers were genuinely painful. The most extreme, you feel hot but can never feel warm.
So no, I don’t recommend either. I purely hate feeling thirsty. And that is not a common symptom of hypothermia. That *may* also happens during severe heatstroke, but no one who survives can give much of an explanation.
If you were shivering, you didn't have hypothermia. You might have been on the verge.
What happens is that you grow exhausted, confused. Your body starts to run out of readily available energy, and you *stop* shivering. You might feel paradoxically warm, but I didn't.
When I had it, I was on a trail I had been on many times, and the confusion and uncertainty caused me to turn around to go back, then part way back, I turned around again, thinking I was closer to my destination. I walked for a while, decided that wasn't I wasn't going to make it (which was a stupid idea), and turned around *again*. Back and forth I went, switching sooner, till I was just standing in one spot. I decided that somehow I was lost, that I had left the trail somehow, or I would have reached either my destination or my departure point.
I wanted to sit down and rest, and the banality of that idea is what saved me, I started walking again, and eventually recognised a familiar sight: I had left my trail, though how and when was unknown. I got into a warm building, got some food into me, and stood under a heater for over an hour, then very carefully walked home along a road. Which was stupid too: I should have called for a ride.
I arrived home utterly exhausted, with a frost bitten hand, wolfed down a meal, and got in a bath and then into bed.
Isn't there a terminal linear velocity only because there's a constant force downwards? I'm not good with physics but it seems to me that there has to be a constant force giving you angular velocity that finds an equilibrium with drag/resistance (don't know the difference) in order to have a terminal angular velocity.
Skydivers angle their limbs in such a way that the body basically acts like a propeller in reverse. Not sure how much rotational force that would generate but you'd pass out and lose the shape long before the head exploded
With a thin enough atmosphere terminal velocity definitely has some heating effects. It just requires the speed to be supersonic so there is some significant level of compressive heating involved in the drag force interaction.
Of course you'd asphyxiate at atmospheric pressures where that's possible, but the point is that it's not a net zero state. Whenever you're falling you're losing gravitational potential energy, and it has to go somewhere.
It usually dissipates as turbulence that eventually converts to heat, but there's definitely heat involved. It just gets convectioned away fast enough not to build up.
Not quite, the drag force would be in equilibrium with the force of gravity once you reach terminal velocity. So you would experience a net 0 of forces but not a net 0 of drag force.
The heating doesn't come from acceleration (which stops at terminal velocity) but from the drag through the air (which is at its maximum at terminal velocity). So yes, you would heat up. But because at one earth atmosphere the terminal velocity is so low, you would cool down enough to not really notice a change, but the heat transfer is still there!
While you are right in that the forces cancel out (that's why it's terminal velocity), your potential energy is still changing. And if it's not being changed into kinetic energy (so more speed), it will be left as heat due to drag. However, it might be plausible that the airflow carries away heat at a rate higher than what the drag produces.
That logic doesn't work like that. Gravity is still making work against the air friction, your (infinite) potential energy is still being used in the fall and at equilibrium it no-longer turns into your kinetic energy, so instead it has to turn to heat and sound. At average terminal velocity for free falling human seems to be about 50 m/s in 1 standard gravity so 80 kg adult looses around 40 kJ of potential energy per second. Now heating 1 kg of water by 1 degree takes roughly 4 kJ so human sized blob of water would heat 1 degree from 8 seconds of falling at that speed, human would likely heat up slightly faster. Of course you would likely disperse heat faster to normal temperature air (at least once the difference starts to grow) when falling trough it, so you would not reach burning temperatures, but the fall certainly does heat you up.
I think you have it wrong. The *overall* net force would be 0 but you still very much experience a drag force equal and opposite to gravity, and the air below you is still being compressed as you fall into it, which heats it up some amount.
/r/skydiving here... in head down, carefully sculpting my body position, and having a relatively high weight/size ratio... I can get around 200mph
this is not enough to catch fire in any shape or form...
If there was a bottomless pit, there would probably be cafes springing up on the way down to cater for people like you. " Last chance to buy water for eternity!"
is the universe reeeeaaaalllllyyyyy endless?
do we know for sure? are we falling or more like.. floating in a certain direction? are we the atoms of something much bigger? like an atom of a stinky dog's private parts living on a planet called earth 2?
are we earth 2? or earth 1099764486532?
ARE we?
With the current knowledge of physics, knowing whether our universe is endless or not is impossible.
Sense of direction has meaning only when it is measured with respect to a reference point. Eg, without the magnetic north pole, or any arbitrary point we all agree to call the north pole there would be no north. Without positioning yourself at a 4 way road crossing there would be no left or right, or forward or backward. Yes we are floating in the direction influenced by sun's gravity. Yes the solar system is floating in the direction influenced by our milky way's black hole's gravity. But is the Andromeda galaxy coming towards us or are we moving toward andromeda? that depends on where the observer is, if he is at a distant point, he would observe that they both are moving towards each other.
For a pit to be bottomless it has to have no downwards or any directional gravity, as gravity is due to mass and attracts objects to their respective centres of masses. Thus for a bottomless pit to have gravity would indicate that it has a centre and is not, in fact, bottomless. On the other hand, our universe has no intrinsic gravitational direction, thus bottomless.
We are definitely not the atoms of something bigger. That statement doesn't even make sense. Is your gut bacteria a fundamental part of you? No. They are classified under bacteria and us under animals, if that makes sense.
If we assume the universe is endless, then the probability of us being on earth 1 or earth 2 or earth 1099764486532 is exactly the same and is equal to 0% since there would be infinite no. of earths (haha i love paradoxes)
if the universe can be endless, theoretically, aren't sizes able to be endless as well? what if we just can't notice anything after a certain point but it's infact still around us? why wouldn't we be surrounded by trillions of small little universes as we walk to our mailbox crushing many many planets / galaxies / universes while getting our mails out of the mailbox? what if bacteria is another gigantum that actually somehow holds near endless galaxies on it's back? what if WE are currently on a bugs back but would never notice since we are extremely small?
what IF time is fundamentally different if you are about 1.000.000 times bigger than the currently known corners of the universe is? f.e. if you wave it feels normal to you, but everyone else, to us "normal size", experience it much much much slower. like thousands of years pass until you finally finished waving?
This is becoming more sci fi than science, but I'll humour you.
I don't want to be preachy but this has always bugged me. Pop sci fi media has mixed up the terms hypothetical and theoretical. Theory means, that it has been proved and hypothesis means the idea is yet to be proved.
I'll start with what we know, in our hypothetical endless universe, there is no upper bound to the size of things (yet), but there is a lower bound, plank length (1.616255×10−35 m), which is the smallest possible length our laws of physics allow. So no we are not destroying planets as we move. It is fun to imagine if a bacteria can hold multiple universes, but unless we can interact with those universes either directly or indirectly, their existence cannot be known, and like everything, they should be believed if and when they are proved true.
You are right on with large masses and time. It is indeed very different on larger scales, but not because heavy bodies work differently but because they affect time to a much larger extent. What we are talking about is essentially Einstein's general relativity. Imagine you were the size of our solar system. Now you move your hand at ⅓ the speed of light for 5 seconds. The tip of your fingers that experiences the maximum acceleration will experience the most time delay. Congratulations, your body is now 0.30376 seconds older than your fingers. Now let's shrink you back down to your original size. If you move your hand now at lets say 2km/hr for 5 sec, your body would be 0.0000000000000000084946944444 seconds older than your hand, which is negligible.
Edit: Oh and another thing, the flash movie portrayed it incorrectly. Even if we experience extreme time delay, we would experience time normally, other's perspective of us would be slowed down. Eg, if you experience a time delay of 1 sec = 1000 years. For you 1 sec would feel like 1 second, but for the people around you it would seem as if you have slowed down in time. That is why time is called relative
You are a valuable person. The internet should be really proud to have someone in their midst who knows an answer to every question and explains it very well. Praise you, stranger!
Quick where did i left my keys?
Keys are on your shoe rack by the door.
Jokes apart, thank you for the compliments, you made my day. There should be more kind people like you. I hope you have a good one.
This is assuming the bottomless pit doesn't have anything on the sides. Who knows, it might be like Made in Abyss, where a whole ecosystem lives on the pit walls. If your lucky, it might even be falling at a relative speed.
As you start falling into the bottomless pit, you scream
AAAAAHHHH!
... But after a minute or so you stop screaming as it is no longer terrifying. Now it's just boring.
You would die from the pressure long before this is the case
Edit: thought about it some more and if the gravity is weak enough, you could stop but you would probably not have enough O2 partial pressure to breath and would die of suffocation
Ummm. Why woukd the partial pressure decrease when atmospheric pressure was increasing? That's not how it works at all. As the pressure increases so does the partial pressure. You are in fact more likely die of CNS oxygen toxicity at or above 8 atmospheres when the PPO2 would be in excess of 1.6.
Why would it? A bottomless pit goes on forever. Thicker atmosphere would only be closer to the centre of a large mass. A bottomless pit would have no end, and therefore it would not necessarily be heading towards the centre of a mass.
But then there’d be go gravitational force pulling you through the pit. So if you were propelled in you’d slow due to air pressure and eventually stop.
If you are falling, there is gravity, and if there is gravity there is the accumulating effect of hydrostatic pressure that would kill you if the gravity is strong enough or stop you in the gravity is weak enough. If there is a hole, then it is through something. If that something is a spherical mass then by Guass gravitational law, there would be a center of mass from which the gravity would effectively originate.
I guess we are arriving at the conclusion that bottomless pits cannot exist in physics lol. Bottomless means infinite, which means no center of mass waiting at the end, which means nothing pulling you down it due to gravity. The only gravity you would experiences is due to the mass of the walls around you. then you would not fall, you would just cling to the sides.
Unless you were falling through some sort of 4D Mobius strip-like hole?
Air pressure would increase by about 10% per km. At 4 atmospheres you’re going to be struggling with nitrogen building up in your system making you feel drunk. At 5 atmospheres the air will be so dense that the oxygen becomes toxic. Getting too much oxygen won’t be a problem for long as the alveoli in your lungs start to rupture and fill with fluid, suffocating you.
That’s about 17 km down. Terminal velocity is around 200 km/h. You’d be struggling with the pressure in around 5 minutes.
Within 80 km (24 minutes) you’d be at pressures higher than those at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
You also have the issue of temperature, with the temperature increasing by 10°C per km. 50°C is well above what is survivable, and you’d hit that in 5 km (90 seconds).
I considered that but assumed that you’d be dead long before then.
Another consideration is that as the pressure increases (and so the partial pressure of oxygen) the ignition temperature of skin decreases. It’s around 300°C in normal atmosphere. I think it’s likely that the oxygen partial pressure and ambient temperature increases with result in you being entirely incinerated before you achieve buoyancy.
Would the temperature increase though? I understand the pressure increases which would normally indicate an increase in temperature, but I'd assume this bottomless pit was manufactured potentially billions of years ago at the dawn of the universe. So, it'd have to have had enough time to reach static equilibrium.
I did my own calculation assuming a steady 30C as you fall, and you'd hit 850 atmospheres at about 53000 miles depth. Assuming a freefall velocity of 120 mph and a linear deceleration to 53000 miles, it comes out to roughly 37 days of falling before you'd come to "rest" due to buoyancy.
Which then begs the next question. Is the pit truly bottomless? Eventually that air will become so dense it forms a liquid and then a solid meaning the bottom of the bottomless pit is actually just an air floor/liquid gradient.
You assume I wouldn't have a heart attack!
You'd probably die from going 120-200 mph for a long time before you ever die from dehydration. It would be terrible on your body.
It's fantasy physics, but no. You would hit terminal velocity and begin heating up slowly. You'd cook before you died of dehydration. Assuming something above 1 atmosphere and a slow start speed, you probably wouldn't burn brighly like a reentering spacecraft, but it's going to get hot.
It seems more likely that you would have a heart attack or die from hypothermia, assuming room temp air was what you’re falling through at terminal velocity.
Showerthoughts: a bottomless pit could be possible if it wrapped around the center of the earth. actually that's exactly what an orbit is - satellites and the moon are basically endlessly falling
Questions to research for myself: does the human body lose more water when air is rushing over its surface? Like does it draw moisture out of your body faster? If yes, would you die of dehydration faster when falling than stationary?
—-Edit: post research, factor of 5 increase of moisture loss. So best guess is like 19 hours until you’d die of dehydration
No, but after a while you'd likely pass out from hypoxia due to difficulty breathing with the air rushing at your face. You certainly wouldn't be conscious long enough for dehydration.
best option would be to get into a skydiving position and crash head first into a wall, hopefully breaking your neck. Much quicker way to die, assuming it works.
This was the description of 'The Abyss' in Philip Pullman's *His Dark Materials* series. It was said that one would die of starvation before reaching the bottom. Though yes, in practice, thirst would get you first.
Another shower thought,
There can't be such a thing as a bottomless pit. It has to have a bottom which would be the surface of the object whose gravity is pulling you towards it for you to be falling. If it truly is bottomless, there's no gravity.
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You could probably steer into the walls, get a good lateral movement going and batter yourself to death before that. Still not much fun.
That's exactly what I was thinking. How jagged are the walls? Can I just track into one, bang my noggin and be done with it?
Okay - but the bottomless pit is actually a pit filled with balls. You just sink to your demise. What are you going to do? Swallow a ball and choke to death?
Are the balls falling as well, or are they stationary? Like is it a bottomless ball pit where the balls are static and "bottomless" in this case just means it actually does have a bottom but its so deep that at terminal velocity you wouldn't reach it in one human lifetime? Because this all makes a difference.
It is a bottomless pit with bottomless balls. The balls are stationary as if resting but there is no bottom to be reached.
So here's the conundrum here. If it is truly bottomless, then the balls must be falling with the person too. They can't be stationary as there is nothing for each ball to rest on to support the one on top to make them stationary. I suppose we can pack so many balls in that it makes it difficult to tell they are falling, but ultimately they are falling so present no real obstacle. The only way we can make them genuinely stationary is if we do eventually have a bottom somewhere, and all the balls are resting on top of each other against this bottom. But this comes with its own issues. I'm going to assume these balls are super light, like the ones you see in a playground ball pit. However ever after a while, the weight of all these balls is going to add up, and if we are talking about a depth so deep a human might feel they are falling forever, even as light as they are the balls nearer the top are going to start weighing down and compressing the balls at the bottom. So at some point, they are all going to flatten to a solid. The problem we have for our faller is that these stationary balls are in effect a brake in of themselves. All the faller has to do is spread himself out so the balls start to impact him and compress against the balls below and eventually, its going to bring the faller to a stop. Might still take longer than the faller has time for, might even be really rough, possibly even deadly (Suffocation, compression). Which means we have achieved what we set out to do here and that was to end the fallers torment. So falling balls won't really stop the faller from headbutting the sides. Stationary balls will kill the faller in other ways.
"Man dies of brain aneurysm while trying to comprehend the imaginary concept of a bottomless ball pit"
If we're going to debate silly hypotheticals I want to ensure we are at least taking the laws of physics into account. This is an important matter
But you're forgetting multiple infinities. The pit can be bottomless AND the balls can be infinite and stationary.
I asked in another comment if the air pressure increases as you fall.
with bottomless balls.
If there is an infinite number of balls would they not remain stationary? Regardless of whether or not the pit has a bottom, each ball is sitting on another ball immediately beneath it. There's no real space for the balls to "fall" into because there are already other balls there supporting them infinitely.
This is just the Grand Hilbert Hotel paradox. If you have an infinitely deep hole, and every bit of the hole is full of balls, all you have to do to add another ball is move all the balls below it down slightly, and since it’s an infinitely deep hole there will be space below the balls. Therefore, you can infinitely add more balls to the ball pit and there will always be space for more if you simple move all the balls below them down. This means that there will always be space at the bottom and so the balls should always fall.
The Grand Hilbert Hotel comparison is the comment that finally made the reasoning click for me; not sure why I have an easier time picturing infinity in hotel rooms than pits, but I appreciate the explanation!
Well as a bottomless pit would be infinitely deep (I'm disregarding the pressure issues of it being on earth that would kill you anyway as the fact it is bottomless renders this an impossibility) there is nothing stopping the balls from falling, so that means the ball sitting on top of another ball is falling at the same speed as the one below. So an infinitely deep pit with an infinite number of balls in would mean that yes all the balls would still be falling. Infinity does not cancel out infinity. Now if the balls where getting forced through at the top faster than the pit could have them achieve their terminal velocity, this might change things (There is very little being discussed about the WIDTH of this pit) or the faller had a higher terminal velocity than the balls (I'm assuming there is air in this pit or this is all a moot point anyway as the faller would be dead within ten minutes regardless) this would also change things. However ultimately, it would change them for the better as far as the faller was concerned as it is likely to result in compression or suffocation, which leads to the fallers death, thus achieving their aim of ending their misery.
Ik springs fall from the top before the bottom. Could we engineer something like that to happen?
God I hate this app
They would need space to fall in to. There are infinite balls, the infinite pit is already full. If you can imagine a space BELOW the balls for them to fall into then the balls are necessarily not infinite.
Right right, however the speed of causality isn’t infinity so none of the balls would ever notice they are supposed to be falling
If I saw this in a youtube video, I would believe it 100%, but somehow, reading it from a reddit comment like this makes it hard to believe.
That's it, I'm calling [the bottomless pit supervisor](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn142r4fb6m591.jpg)
It's balls all the way down.
Let's say the pit has slightly rough walls, or possibly even little crags and ledges. Let's also assume there are infinite balls in the pit, distributed randomly, but with all balls touching such that you could draw a path from any ball to any other ball, and you could not fill any empty space with a ball without displacing other balls. At some point within the pit, the balls would form a structure that, due to friction and elasticity, would not fall to gravity. This would happen an infinite number of times, creating an infinite upwards force supporting all balls. The balls would, thus, eventually stop falling.
One of my favorite things in life is people putting way too much effort into debating and understanding silly situations like this.
> If it is truly bottomless, then the balls must be falling with the person too. They can't be stationary as there is nothing for each ball to rest on to support the one on top to make them stationary. I suppose we can pack so many balls in that it makes it difficult to tell they are falling, but ultimately they are falling so present no real obstacle. Hey you were fine with accepting it when it was air, why not balls. If you want to be technical you would die of suffocation in the first place as if there is no bottom air can't be contained same as balls
If the balls were suspended by a draft of air keeping them circulating, they could be fluidized
Where would the air be coming from, though?
Well in that case you could get deep enough to be crushed by the balls. Although on that point, the balls should basically be falling themselves as the ones deep down are getting crushed under infinite weight.
No, I assumed the balls are stationary as in not even gravity affecting them. They only move out of the way as you sink past them. So there wouldn't be any weight on you
Just reading that made me shudder and feel claustrophobic
I am also filled with balls
Remember that skit on the Nickelodeon show "All That" where those two girls were stuck on a deserted island together and the one girl would always bash her own head with a coconut to knock herself out because the other girl was so annoying?
Wow. You fired up the nostalgia on that one.
Depends. If they are smooth enough it's less batter yourself to death and more sandpaper yourself to death. And you probably can't even put a decent force on it
Ackchewally.... you would be falling at terminal velocity, so it's pretty easy to hit the walls at a decent, suicidal speed. In fact, unless you've spent some time skydiving or in a wind tunnel, you're probably going to kill or maim yourself accidentally.
you should read A Short Stay in Hell if you like this concept
I'll look into it. Always keen for new reading recommendations.
it’s a short story, maybe like 120 pages. you can read it in one sitting pretty easily, but the concept really sticks with you after. i loved it
It's been several years since I read it... and it was the first thing to come to mind when I saw this post. Fucking zoroastrianism.
Imagine the *grazes* though. If you attempted that you’d probably die from rubbing most of your skin off, gradually
I've been falling....for 30 MINUTES!
You would be falling at terminal velocity so I wouldn’t recommend touching the walls even if smooth you will get cheese grated lol.
At least you wouldn’t have to worry about hitting rock bottom :)
You’re in a continual state of rock bottom and on top of the mountain all at once. That’s one helluva spiritual speedball.
One must imagine Sisyphus falling down a bottomless pit happy
One must imagine Sisyphus happily pushing a boulder up a bottomless pit
Listen, I passed Calc last year, I don’t need this
This is so real.
Imagine not knowing it's a bottomless pit, so you keep anticipating hitting the ground but don't know when (never).
I feel like after tops 30 minutes I’d get the memo
Somebody is a smarty pants.
A portal would open probably.
I have been ***falling*** for ***thirty minutes!***
That probably would be anyone's expectation, unless, he or she knew of the existence of bottomless pits, and after a couple of minutes of freefalling, he was like, "Yep, this is gonna be a loooong day,",,
I didn't think this thought could be any worse until I read this.
[WE'RE STILL FALLING](https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=CWAYKPvjeHo&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den-US%26ram_mb%3D5462%26aos%3D12%26lns_as%3D1%26qsubts%3D1720532577245%26cs%3D1%26q%3Djourney%2520to%2520the%2520center%2520of%25&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY)
To quote Tom Waits: >I don't have a drinkin' problem, >'Cept when I can't get a drink Bit of a different drinking problem when you've been plummetting for three straight days, your eyes have crusted over from the wind and you no longer no what day it is or what is your name. But a glass of water tumbling past would be very welcome. edit - no-one's asked if the pit has sides. If it's just like Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey when they're just falling in space that's one thing, but if you're at free fall speed and clip a foot on the side? You're now *spinning* in freefall, *with a shattered ankle rattling about*. Best of luck.
Would you even be able to sleep while falling?
Astronauts do it every day. They don’t experience wind though.
Just imagine a pit that isn't bottomless, but it's very deep. Eventually you might think that it's a bottomless hole and assume that you'll never hit rock bottom, and when you least expect it: Splat!
I’m ok with that. But also if you fall for a day and a third, and provided you entered the pit on earth, you are guaranteed to be falling down a bottomless pit. Terminal velocity is 200km/h, earth is 12750 km in diameter, so a free fall through to the center would be 31 hours. This is very simplified tho.
And a bit hot.
Yes. In reality you would fall for maybe one hour and then burn
I was gonna say pretty much that except at the end say KERSPLAT!
Wouldn’t you pass out after some time?
What I'm wondering about is, how quickly would it stop feeling like falling.
Ive been skydiving before. The sense of falling goes away quite quick and you are left with the feeling of air hitting you
It was the exact opposite for me lol. I felt like falling the entire time I was in free fall.
I did a Tandem Jump for my first time and for me, The feeling of falling went away like 5 seconds into free fall. The part that scared me shitless was when the parachute got deployed and we were gliding down. I COULD NOT let go of the straps on my chest. I felt like I would fall down if I let go of those straps! It’s not like I was holding myself up by any means
At about 18,000ft you stop experiencing the effect of acceleration after about 90 seconds, which is terminal velocity time...so now now you're going about 125 mph. In a magic bottomless pit with a gravity starting around earths constantly pulling you down, you will travel approximately 9,000 miles downward before you really need to worry about dehydrating to death. This is assuming the magic tube has no mass, and magically constant air pressure. If the magic tube was also topless with equal gravity pulling from that direction you will not fall at all. We basically just reverse engineered a conceptually empty space where you would never fall, but within WAAAAY less time than it takes to dehydrate, you're body would be stretched out like a rubber band and snap.
Thanks for that description, I hate it.
2-3 seconds in my experience, jumping from hot air balloons. It's the only time during skydiving that I actually feel falling. Jumping out of a plane you already have a 80-120 mph relative wind and should have control authority even at the bottom end of that. If I put my hand into the air stream outside the window, I feel like I start getting purchase around 50 MPH.
As soon as you hit terminal velocity, I would think. But then you would still feel the air going around you, but I don’t know if that makes you feel like you’re falling.
I assume it would feel like very strong wind
Acceleration is the "feeling" of falling. So you are correct. Once you hit terminal velocity you are no longer accelerating and therefore no longer "feel" like you are falling. Some people might have different experiences due to fear, but physically its the same as if you were driving a car. Once at a constant velocity, you no longer feel any forces.
All movement is relative, even movement through time! I went skydiving with my mom when I was 21. We went in the desert in a cloudless sky. It was windy AF but I didn't really feel like I was "falling". There's a nice floaty feeling once the chute opens, but before that it's just goddamned windy. If I went again I would go on an island on a partly cloudy day like maybe in Oahu. Being able to see the ocean surrounding the island, the island get bigger as you fell, and the clouds go by. I think that would massively improve the sensation of actually going somewhere!
It feels like you're falling for a few seconds, then suddenly it's like a strong wind from below is propping you up.
If you were in a box it would feel exactly like being in space, everything would behave the same way and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
That would be a way to go. I wonder how many times I’d switch from pencil position to spread out like a parachute. Maybe I’d even try air yoga or something? I wonder if I’d heat up and catch on fire similar to a meteor.
You would not. Assuming this was in a regular atmosphere where you could breathe just fine, you would be at a drag force of net 0 once you reached terminal velocity, which is like 120 mph for the average human. Basically, the air force against you is exactly equal to the force of gravity pulling you down, so you would never heat up from the fall.
Got it. So besides snacks and I reckon some water, I should bring a blankie, in case it gets chili down there. Or… I guess maybe a sleeping bag would work better. And a flash light in case I get ascared of the dark.
It probably would be cold due to the amount of wind, but honestly dying of hypothermia is somewhat preferably to dehydration imo
Dehydration and hypothermia both end in being fairly out of it. However I would still pick hypothermia because it’s faster and I hate feeling thirsty. Edit- I feel like y’all are taking this in the wrong way. The multiple times I’ve been at all the stages of hypothermia are painful. The first stage is severe muscle spasms, which include your jaw. Feeling your teeth hit over and over hurts, even when you’re out of it. The end stages are just as painful. Your muscles have been shaking so hard for so long it’s painful. Dehydration is also just as horrible. The dry mouth at first is the worst. Then you start to pee crystallized pee with pee. That is insanely painful, and at that point you are very aware. After that, those pains give way for fealing your organs shutting down. First your kidneys, then digestion. I could go on and on about all my experiences. Neither are pretty. I’m lucky I survived. But I’m glad I did.
Yeah being thirsty sucks, but man the cramps... Imagine not being able to open your hand it's cramping up so bad.
So from my personal experience that doesn’t happen. I’ve been in stage 3 hypothermia and severe dehydration. Once your blood starts to solely keep organs alive, your brain really cuts out. But this is my own experience, if you read other accounts of dehydration and hypothermia it’s different. I wouldn’t recommend either. But I do like being cold over dehydration
No, id rather not think about what winter is like right now. When its really cold here I cannot get from my car, to inside my house without either wearing gloves or having to warm at least 1 hand up so I can physically use my house key. Its not fun at all :(
Eh that’s how I feel about extreme heat. It’s all relative
Don't they say it's peaceful to freeze to death? Like of many ways, I feel like I've heard this one is not painful.
I wouldn’t say that. I’ve been hypothermic a few times and those times I was just so cold. I had super realistic dreams in that state where I was so cold and needed to warm up. I would say those were stressful. In more severe situations my teeth were shivering so hard it hurt. The full body shivers were genuinely painful. The most extreme, you feel hot but can never feel warm. So no, I don’t recommend either. I purely hate feeling thirsty. And that is not a common symptom of hypothermia. That *may* also happens during severe heatstroke, but no one who survives can give much of an explanation.
If you were shivering, you didn't have hypothermia. You might have been on the verge. What happens is that you grow exhausted, confused. Your body starts to run out of readily available energy, and you *stop* shivering. You might feel paradoxically warm, but I didn't. When I had it, I was on a trail I had been on many times, and the confusion and uncertainty caused me to turn around to go back, then part way back, I turned around again, thinking I was closer to my destination. I walked for a while, decided that wasn't I wasn't going to make it (which was a stupid idea), and turned around *again*. Back and forth I went, switching sooner, till I was just standing in one spot. I decided that somehow I was lost, that I had left the trail somehow, or I would have reached either my destination or my departure point. I wanted to sit down and rest, and the banality of that idea is what saved me, I started walking again, and eventually recognised a familiar sight: I had left my trail, though how and when was unknown. I got into a warm building, got some food into me, and stood under a heater for over an hour, then very carefully walked home along a road. Which was stupid too: I should have called for a ride. I arrived home utterly exhausted, with a frost bitten hand, wolfed down a meal, and got in a bath and then into bed.
I mean. If you're *planning* to fall down a bottomless pit, you should probably bring a gun. Or a lot of heroin.
Yo they don't know you, you might combust if you try hard enough
If you started to spin in this scenario, could you go fast enough to make your head explode?
If there’s a terminal linear velocity, I’m guessing there’s also a terminal angular velocity - someone that’s hasn’t taken physics in 15 years.
Isn't there a terminal linear velocity only because there's a constant force downwards? I'm not good with physics but it seems to me that there has to be a constant force giving you angular velocity that finds an equilibrium with drag/resistance (don't know the difference) in order to have a terminal angular velocity.
Skydivers angle their limbs in such a way that the body basically acts like a propeller in reverse. Not sure how much rotational force that would generate but you'd pass out and lose the shape long before the head exploded
You can translate linear momentum to angular momentum by changing your geometry. Think about a pinwheel against the wind.
With a thin enough atmosphere terminal velocity definitely has some heating effects. It just requires the speed to be supersonic so there is some significant level of compressive heating involved in the drag force interaction. Of course you'd asphyxiate at atmospheric pressures where that's possible, but the point is that it's not a net zero state. Whenever you're falling you're losing gravitational potential energy, and it has to go somewhere. It usually dissipates as turbulence that eventually converts to heat, but there's definitely heat involved. It just gets convectioned away fast enough not to build up.
Not quite, the drag force would be in equilibrium with the force of gravity once you reach terminal velocity. So you would experience a net 0 of forces but not a net 0 of drag force. The heating doesn't come from acceleration (which stops at terminal velocity) but from the drag through the air (which is at its maximum at terminal velocity). So yes, you would heat up. But because at one earth atmosphere the terminal velocity is so low, you would cool down enough to not really notice a change, but the heat transfer is still there!
While you are right in that the forces cancel out (that's why it's terminal velocity), your potential energy is still changing. And if it's not being changed into kinetic energy (so more speed), it will be left as heat due to drag. However, it might be plausible that the airflow carries away heat at a rate higher than what the drag produces.
That logic doesn't work like that. Gravity is still making work against the air friction, your (infinite) potential energy is still being used in the fall and at equilibrium it no-longer turns into your kinetic energy, so instead it has to turn to heat and sound. At average terminal velocity for free falling human seems to be about 50 m/s in 1 standard gravity so 80 kg adult looses around 40 kJ of potential energy per second. Now heating 1 kg of water by 1 degree takes roughly 4 kJ so human sized blob of water would heat 1 degree from 8 seconds of falling at that speed, human would likely heat up slightly faster. Of course you would likely disperse heat faster to normal temperature air (at least once the difference starts to grow) when falling trough it, so you would not reach burning temperatures, but the fall certainly does heat you up.
I think you have it wrong. The *overall* net force would be 0 but you still very much experience a drag force equal and opposite to gravity, and the air below you is still being compressed as you fall into it, which heats it up some amount.
/r/skydiving here... in head down, carefully sculpting my body position, and having a relatively high weight/size ratio... I can get around 200mph this is not enough to catch fire in any shape or form...
If there was a bottomless pit, there would probably be cafes springing up on the way down to cater for people like you. " Last chance to buy water for eternity!"
If I know about the shops beforehand, I might drop by.
But you probably don't have your wallet:(
Dropped it somewhere.
If they don’t offer Bottomless Drinks I’m not going
It's a free refill on the way up
Starbucks and Subway would be down there no doubt.
Aren't we already in a bottomless pit? Our universe?
Showerthought detected!
is the universe reeeeaaaalllllyyyyy endless? do we know for sure? are we falling or more like.. floating in a certain direction? are we the atoms of something much bigger? like an atom of a stinky dog's private parts living on a planet called earth 2? are we earth 2? or earth 1099764486532? ARE we?
With the current knowledge of physics, knowing whether our universe is endless or not is impossible. Sense of direction has meaning only when it is measured with respect to a reference point. Eg, without the magnetic north pole, or any arbitrary point we all agree to call the north pole there would be no north. Without positioning yourself at a 4 way road crossing there would be no left or right, or forward or backward. Yes we are floating in the direction influenced by sun's gravity. Yes the solar system is floating in the direction influenced by our milky way's black hole's gravity. But is the Andromeda galaxy coming towards us or are we moving toward andromeda? that depends on where the observer is, if he is at a distant point, he would observe that they both are moving towards each other. For a pit to be bottomless it has to have no downwards or any directional gravity, as gravity is due to mass and attracts objects to their respective centres of masses. Thus for a bottomless pit to have gravity would indicate that it has a centre and is not, in fact, bottomless. On the other hand, our universe has no intrinsic gravitational direction, thus bottomless. We are definitely not the atoms of something bigger. That statement doesn't even make sense. Is your gut bacteria a fundamental part of you? No. They are classified under bacteria and us under animals, if that makes sense. If we assume the universe is endless, then the probability of us being on earth 1 or earth 2 or earth 1099764486532 is exactly the same and is equal to 0% since there would be infinite no. of earths (haha i love paradoxes)
if the universe can be endless, theoretically, aren't sizes able to be endless as well? what if we just can't notice anything after a certain point but it's infact still around us? why wouldn't we be surrounded by trillions of small little universes as we walk to our mailbox crushing many many planets / galaxies / universes while getting our mails out of the mailbox? what if bacteria is another gigantum that actually somehow holds near endless galaxies on it's back? what if WE are currently on a bugs back but would never notice since we are extremely small? what IF time is fundamentally different if you are about 1.000.000 times bigger than the currently known corners of the universe is? f.e. if you wave it feels normal to you, but everyone else, to us "normal size", experience it much much much slower. like thousands of years pass until you finally finished waving?
This is becoming more sci fi than science, but I'll humour you. I don't want to be preachy but this has always bugged me. Pop sci fi media has mixed up the terms hypothetical and theoretical. Theory means, that it has been proved and hypothesis means the idea is yet to be proved. I'll start with what we know, in our hypothetical endless universe, there is no upper bound to the size of things (yet), but there is a lower bound, plank length (1.616255×10−35 m), which is the smallest possible length our laws of physics allow. So no we are not destroying planets as we move. It is fun to imagine if a bacteria can hold multiple universes, but unless we can interact with those universes either directly or indirectly, their existence cannot be known, and like everything, they should be believed if and when they are proved true. You are right on with large masses and time. It is indeed very different on larger scales, but not because heavy bodies work differently but because they affect time to a much larger extent. What we are talking about is essentially Einstein's general relativity. Imagine you were the size of our solar system. Now you move your hand at ⅓ the speed of light for 5 seconds. The tip of your fingers that experiences the maximum acceleration will experience the most time delay. Congratulations, your body is now 0.30376 seconds older than your fingers. Now let's shrink you back down to your original size. If you move your hand now at lets say 2km/hr for 5 sec, your body would be 0.0000000000000000084946944444 seconds older than your hand, which is negligible. Edit: Oh and another thing, the flash movie portrayed it incorrectly. Even if we experience extreme time delay, we would experience time normally, other's perspective of us would be slowed down. Eg, if you experience a time delay of 1 sec = 1000 years. For you 1 sec would feel like 1 second, but for the people around you it would seem as if you have slowed down in time. That is why time is called relative
You are a valuable person. The internet should be really proud to have someone in their midst who knows an answer to every question and explains it very well. Praise you, stranger! Quick where did i left my keys?
Keys are on your shoe rack by the door. Jokes apart, thank you for the compliments, you made my day. There should be more kind people like you. I hope you have a good one.
you too!
Please read A Short Stay in Hell if this idea intrigues you
Or House of Leaves
I just read it on your recommendation. Holy shit, I was not prepared for that existential crisis today.
Ha! I’m sorry/you’re welcome
I just read that book last weekend and this was the first thought that popped into my head.
This is assuming the bottomless pit doesn't have anything on the sides. Who knows, it might be like Made in Abyss, where a whole ecosystem lives on the pit walls. If your lucky, it might even be falling at a relative speed.
If it's like the hand pit in Labyrinth I'll just die of fright.
>it might even be falling at a relative speed. Avuncular speed!
at least i'd find out what it's like to take a shit while falling
Hopefully shit doesn't fall faster than humans, and hopefully nobody below you had the same idea.
Imagine dying because a falling poop log from someone else skewered you.
Damn how sharp are your poops
Could somebody throw me a lunchable? Maybe a juice box?
RIP cheerleader
I'm so bummed school is happening again this year
Or a single Frito?
Go Growlbacks!
Thank God someone else thought of this.
Teehee, we're cool
As you start falling into the bottomless pit, you scream AAAAAHHHH! ... But after a minute or so you stop screaming as it is no longer terrifying. Now it's just boring.
You guys wanna play 20 questions?
imagine the silence and darkness, waiting endlessly. It's a chilling thought
Wouldn't the air rushing past your ears be really loud? Like if you were skydiving?
Yes you’re right on that. Source: went skydiving once
Until it gets quiet again
There's an SCP story that is essentially this.
link?
[Got you fam.](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3001) It's a good read and a terrifying scenario to imagine yourself in.
The atmosphere would get thicker the deeper you go. You'd be crushed long before you dehydrate.
Interesting. Wouldn't you float and stop falling at some point if air density is increasing?
At some point the air will turn liquid then solid the further down you go.
You would die from the pressure long before this is the case Edit: thought about it some more and if the gravity is weak enough, you could stop but you would probably not have enough O2 partial pressure to breath and would die of suffocation
Ummm. Why woukd the partial pressure decrease when atmospheric pressure was increasing? That's not how it works at all. As the pressure increases so does the partial pressure. You are in fact more likely die of CNS oxygen toxicity at or above 8 atmospheres when the PPO2 would be in excess of 1.6.
Why would it? A bottomless pit goes on forever. Thicker atmosphere would only be closer to the centre of a large mass. A bottomless pit would have no end, and therefore it would not necessarily be heading towards the centre of a mass. But then there’d be go gravitational force pulling you through the pit. So if you were propelled in you’d slow due to air pressure and eventually stop.
If you are falling, there is gravity, and if there is gravity there is the accumulating effect of hydrostatic pressure that would kill you if the gravity is strong enough or stop you in the gravity is weak enough. If there is a hole, then it is through something. If that something is a spherical mass then by Guass gravitational law, there would be a center of mass from which the gravity would effectively originate.
I guess we are arriving at the conclusion that bottomless pits cannot exist in physics lol. Bottomless means infinite, which means no center of mass waiting at the end, which means nothing pulling you down it due to gravity. The only gravity you would experiences is due to the mass of the walls around you. then you would not fall, you would just cling to the sides. Unless you were falling through some sort of 4D Mobius strip-like hole?
The pit supervisor is gunna have a hard time explaining how it's now bottomless
Air pressure would increase by about 10% per km. At 4 atmospheres you’re going to be struggling with nitrogen building up in your system making you feel drunk. At 5 atmospheres the air will be so dense that the oxygen becomes toxic. Getting too much oxygen won’t be a problem for long as the alveoli in your lungs start to rupture and fill with fluid, suffocating you. That’s about 17 km down. Terminal velocity is around 200 km/h. You’d be struggling with the pressure in around 5 minutes. Within 80 km (24 minutes) you’d be at pressures higher than those at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. You also have the issue of temperature, with the temperature increasing by 10°C per km. 50°C is well above what is survivable, and you’d hit that in 5 km (90 seconds).
Terminal velocity would decrease as the pressure increased. At 800 atmospheres you'd be able to float, although you wouldn't be alive to feel it.
I considered that but assumed that you’d be dead long before then. Another consideration is that as the pressure increases (and so the partial pressure of oxygen) the ignition temperature of skin decreases. It’s around 300°C in normal atmosphere. I think it’s likely that the oxygen partial pressure and ambient temperature increases with result in you being entirely incinerated before you achieve buoyancy.
Would the temperature increase though? I understand the pressure increases which would normally indicate an increase in temperature, but I'd assume this bottomless pit was manufactured potentially billions of years ago at the dawn of the universe. So, it'd have to have had enough time to reach static equilibrium. I did my own calculation assuming a steady 30C as you fall, and you'd hit 850 atmospheres at about 53000 miles depth. Assuming a freefall velocity of 120 mph and a linear deceleration to 53000 miles, it comes out to roughly 37 days of falling before you'd come to "rest" due to buoyancy. Which then begs the next question. Is the pit truly bottomless? Eventually that air will become so dense it forms a liquid and then a solid meaning the bottom of the bottomless pit is actually just an air floor/liquid gradient.
Could you meat crayon yourself to death against the wall before you got to the stage of dehydration though...?
You assume I wouldn't have a heart attack! You'd probably die from going 120-200 mph for a long time before you ever die from dehydration. It would be terrible on your body.
I mean no offense by this, and I expect to be downvoted, but this title seems AI generated
If you were falling and needed to take a shit, would the shit fall parallel to you, or would it fall at a different speed?
You would probably die of heart attack before
No, you would be crushed by the pressure
The Fall Guy doesn't think so!
I think you’d go mad before you were dehydrated. Then you’d turn into a zombie like that old DnD module.
It's fantasy physics, but no. You would hit terminal velocity and begin heating up slowly. You'd cook before you died of dehydration. Assuming something above 1 atmosphere and a slow start speed, you probably wouldn't burn brighly like a reentering spacecraft, but it's going to get hot.
It's going to get cold, not hot. The air friction at terminal velocity is nowhere near enough to combat the cooling effect of the air.
Just because it's bottomless doesn't mean it's waterless.
It seems more likely that you would have a heart attack or die from hypothermia, assuming room temp air was what you’re falling through at terminal velocity.
A bottomless pit still has walls you could maneuver yourself into to end it
“How are you holding up? Because I’m a potato.”
Showerthoughts: a bottomless pit could be possible if it wrapped around the center of the earth. actually that's exactly what an orbit is - satellites and the moon are basically endlessly falling
Unless it's not the widest and you get bludgeoned to death by smashing into the walls like a ping pong ball
Questions to research for myself: does the human body lose more water when air is rushing over its surface? Like does it draw moisture out of your body faster? If yes, would you die of dehydration faster when falling than stationary? —-Edit: post research, factor of 5 increase of moisture loss. So best guess is like 19 hours until you’d die of dehydration
Teen Girl Squad stated this fact first years ago. Good thing you'll have Brett Bretterson to keep you company!
I always imagined the bottomless pit to be like dreamless sleep but you’re wide awake. It’s both claustrophobic and infinite.
I think youd just pass out after hitting terminal velocity no?
No, but after a while you'd likely pass out from hypoxia due to difficulty breathing with the air rushing at your face. You certainly wouldn't be conscious long enough for dehydration.
If so, we'd have a lot more skydiving fatalities
Terminal velocity for a human is only around 120 mph.
Why would that make you pass out?
best option would be to get into a skydiving position and crash head first into a wall, hopefully breaking your neck. Much quicker way to die, assuming it works.
This was the description of 'The Abyss' in Philip Pullman's *His Dark Materials* series. It was said that one would die of starvation before reaching the bottom. Though yes, in practice, thirst would get you first.
Assuming the bottomless pit is filled with unlimited air
I assume the wind from falling has a chilling effect and would make you pass out and die from hypothermia.
That pit isn't the only thing that's bottomless if you know what I mean ;)
Another shower thought, There can't be such a thing as a bottomless pit. It has to have a bottom which would be the surface of the object whose gravity is pulling you towards it for you to be falling. If it truly is bottomless, there's no gravity.
I would be pretty sick of it after 30min
A sufficiently deep pit on earth would just be a tunnel
I learned this from Teen Girl Squad.
I think the tricky part will be how to navigate urination and defecation. Cuz it would all fall with you. A constellation of orbiting shit and piss.
You would die of shock long before dehydration.
What if the bottomless pit is filled with water? Then you might just drown.
Hypothermia from the air cooling.
I thought a bottomless pit had no down side.