Dig to the other side
Give it a point on Earth and it digs straight down through the centre: where you come out, what is there (land, sea or Antarctic ice), how far the nearest shore is, how long the fall takes, and whether to bring a boat. With a picture of the Earth cut in half, to scale.
From Bucharest: Splash landing in the South Pacific Ocean. Learn to swim first, the shore is 1,761 km away.
42.2 minutes. Or 38.
Jump into a tunnel straight through the centre, with no air and no friction, and gravity pulls you down, then slows you on the way up, and you reach the far end just as you stop. Through an Earth of even density that takes 42 minutes 10 seconds, exactly half a lap of a satellite skimming the ground, with a top speed of 28,475 km/h as you pass the centre.
The real Earth is not even: its iron core is far denser than the rock above it, so gravity actually gets stronger on the way down, about 9% stronger by the time you reach the core, 2,900 km in. Alexander Klotz worked it out with the seismic model of the Earth's insides (American Journal of Physics, 2015): 38 minutes 11 seconds. Both numbers ignore that the Earth spins, which would press you against the tunnel wall.
And the digging? The deepest hole ever made, the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, reached 12,262 m in 1989 after nineteen years of drilling. That is 0.0962% of the way. At that pace the whole tunnel would take about 19,700 years.
Endpoints
| Method | Path | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| GET | /v1/dig | The dig from lat, lon: both ends, the nearest land, the fall, the verdict. Takes format=text. |
| GET | /v1/dig/image | The Earth cut in half along your meridian, north up, with your tunnel through the core and both ends named. SVG or PNG, kept for a day. |
Parameters
| Name | Example | Does |
|---|---|---|
lat | 44.4268 | Required. Latitude in decimal degrees, -90 to 90, south negative. |
lon | 26.1025 | Required. Longitude in decimal degrees, -180 to 180, west negative. Values past 180 are refused, not wrapped: on a 0 to 360 map, subtract 360 first. |
format | text | /v1/dig: json (default) or text, one plain line. /image: svg (default) or png. |
size | 800 | Image only: the width in pixels, 400 to 1600, default 1000. The height is 72% of it. |
Calls
$ curl "https://api.tasta.space/v1/dig?lat=44.4268&lon=26.1025"
$ curl "https://api.tasta.space/v1/dig?lat=40.4168&lon=-3.7038&format=text"
$ curl -o dig.png "https://api.tasta.space/v1/dig/image?lat=-33.87&lon=151.21&format=png"
$ curl -o pole.svg "https://api.tasta.space/v1/dig/image?lat=90&lon=0&size=600"
A dig from Bucharest looks like this
{
"data": {
"from": {
"lat": 44.4268,
"lon": 26.1025,
"place": "Romania",
"country": "Romania",
"country_code": "RO",
"island": null,
"surface": "land",
"water_type": null
},
"to": {
"lat": -44.4268,
"lon": -153.8975,
"place": "South Pacific Ocean",
"country": null,
"country_code": null,
"island": null,
"surface": "water",
"water_type": "ocean"
},
"land": false,
"nearest_land": {
"name": "Chatham Islands",
"country": "New Zealand",
"km": 1761,
"lat": -44.27,
"lon": -176.11
},
"tunnel_km": 12742,
"fall_minutes": {
"uniform_earth": 42.2,
"real_earth": 38.2
},
"top_speed_kmh": 28475,
"depth_record": {
"name": "Kola Superdeep Borehole",
"where": "Murmansk Oblast, Russia",
"depth_m": 12262,
"year": 1989,
"share_of_tunnel_percent": 0.0962,
"years_for_the_whole_tunnel_at_that_pace": 19700
},
"verdict": "Splash landing in the South Pacific Ocean. Learn to swim first, the shore is 1,761 km away.",
"image": "https://api.tasta.space/v1/dig/image?lat=44.4268&lon=26.1025"
},
"meta": {
"radius_km": 6371,
"notes": {
"uniform_earth": "A tunnel straight through an Earth of even density, no air, no friction: π√(R³/GM), half the period of an orbit skimming the surface. top_speed_kmh is reached at the centre.",
"real_earth": "The same fall through the real, layered Earth (Preliminary Reference Earth Model): 38 min 11 s. Klotz, American Journal of Physics 83, 231 (2015).",
"nearest_land": "Great-circle distance to the nearest coast in Natural Earth 1:10m, simplified. Right to within a few kilometres.",
"depth_record": "True vertical depth, reached in 1989 after drilling began in 1970. Longer wells exist, but they go sideways."
},
"data": "Natural Earth (public domain)"
}
}
What the fields mean
| Field | Means |
|---|---|
from, to | Where you start and where you come out, the exact antipode. surface is land, ice (Antarctica) or water; place is the country, or the ocean or sea; island names the island when there is one; water_type says ocean, sea, gulf, bay, strait and so on. |
land | Whether the far end is solid: land or ice. |
nearest_land | When you come out in water: the closest coast, its country and how far it is, as the crow flies. Approximate to a few kilometres. null on land. |
tunnel_km | The length of the tunnel: the Earth's mean diameter, 12,742 km. |
fall_minutes | The fall through an Earth of even density, and through the real one. |
top_speed_kmh | Your speed at the centre, even density. |
depth_record | The deepest hole humans have dug, how much of your tunnel it is, and how long yours would take at its pace. |
verdict | What to pack. The same point always gets the same verdict. |
image | The picture of this dig. |
Errors of its own
On top of the hub's errors.
| Status | Code | When |
|---|---|---|
| 422 | invalid_parameter | lat or lon missing, not a number, or off the planet; a format or size it does not know |
Try it
Where the numbers come from
Countries, seas and islands: Natural Earth, public domain, the 1:10m country, marine area and island shapes, simplified to about a kilometre. Big lakes count as the country around them; the Caspian Sea counts as a sea. Borders are Natural Earth's, which draws the ones in dispute as they are on the ground.
The layers: the Preliminary Reference Earth Model (Dziewonski and Anderson, 1981), radius of the inner core 1,221.5 km, of the whole core 3,480 km, of the Earth 6,371 km on average. The fall: Klotz, "The gravity tunnel in a non-uniform Earth", American Journal of Physics 83, 231 (2015). The hole: the Kola Superdeep Borehole, 12,262 m true vertical depth, 1989.