Monday, July 24, 2006

Argentina to China

Standing out in the hall (not the cold) before class today one of my friends brought up the subject of drilling straight through the center of the Earth and coming out in China. Specifically, he was wondering where you would have to start to end up in China. Being the brilliant, almost-Masters-of-Science Computer scientists that we are, we realized that anywhere in the northern hemisphere would place you in the southern hemisphere on the other side, thus missing China. This did not stop us, being the brilliant almost-blah-blah-blah that we are, from theorizing that perhaps you could tunnel from Cuba and that there is a "Communist connection" between China and Cuba through the middle of the Earth through which citizens of these countries can travel. Not long after this thought, one of the Chinese students came by. We asked him where we would have to start drilling from to end up in China and, without even pausing to think, he replied "Oh, Argentina." We were a little perturbed by how fast he answered, so our interest was piqued. And look what we found. All this time, it was just sitting right below our noses. I figure the travel time is so fast because on the way to the center of the earth you are basically free falling, so you'll go at least terminal velocity, if you're unchecked.

5 comments:

JMC said...

I have a Chinese friend who grew up in Argentina... I always thought that it was strange, but now it all makes sense!

RJ said...

Nice - that's pretty awesome. I work with a guy who is half hispanic and half Chinese, so I bet his parents met and conceived at a rest stop in the middle of the tunnel. His accent is freaking weird.

CharlesPeirce said...

Outside what class were you standing, standingoutinthecold?

Also, I saw a girl at the gym last night who looks like your wife, so now there are three bizarro members of your family at my gym:

-Bizarro Randy Owen (he looks like your dad, except shorter, and I play basketball with him sometimes)
-Bizarro RJ Owen (he looks like your brother when your brother has the crazy lion's mane hair)
-Bizarro Lauren Owen (the spitting image of your wife, except taller)

I'm hoping when RJ comes here next week he can see at least one of them.

Greg said...

Are you sure? My wife is pretty tall, and she has been known to travel to the east coast to work out every now and then.

CharlesPeirce said...

That's true, but this girl was taller than me, and when I asked her where you were, she just gave me a blank stare. And then curled a 100-lb dumbbell.