Simulator of digging a tunnel through the earth | Hacker News Reader

Simulator of digging a tunnel through the earth

supertunnel.app

66 pointsdariosalvi7855 comments

It's cool looking, but frankly it has nothing to do with "digging a tunnel". It's a "graphically draw a line through a sphere" app.

Digging a tunnel would have to deal with deep earth concerns, such as how to deal with the core, what to do with the removed material, etc.

Yeah. It's just a line connecting antipodes on a 3D model.

Nice; my "even better if" assuming this thesis project is still in motion:

1. Needs a "stop rotating" button (or a more prominent one if there is one already), especially for something that's for "Interactive Design Thesis"; it's a fascinating toy to play with but after 30 seconds of Globe rotating away from position I put it in, I got frustrated

2. This may be a preliminary version, but again, if a thesis for Interactive Design, being able to click on the globe would seem a pretty intuitive / expected reaction for most initial users

3. Feels like less of a "tunnel" thing and more of a "find out what's on the other side of the globe". It's a cool toy that sets incorrect and high expectations through the title/name.

Otherwise, pretty neat :). Cheers and good luck!

> Thesis project for the Interaction Design master’s at Malmö University

Having to enter the start by a name (or your location) and destination by a 2d grid while neither can be selected on the globe as far as I can tell certainly is a choice you can make for "Interaction Design". A good one though?

Never mind that a joystick is a very imprecise way to select your end point ... I keep trying to hit an island out in the Pacific and cannot with the coarseness of the joystick.

Nice, but where is Antarctica?

Is it possible to stop the rotation of the Earth?

It would be nice to be able to enter the coordinates instead of the name of the city, for people that lives in small towns.

To stop the auto-rotating, paste this into your address bar:

    javascript:app.three.controls.autoRotate = false

Note that Chrome will remove the "javascript:" prefix when pasting, and you'll need to manually add it back yourself.

I was hoping for some interesting information on what happens when such tunnel reaches Earth's inner core...

Ok, I entered start and end position. How do I start the simulation?

I'm afraid that red line is it. The gaming industry spoiled us, giving us so many weird "simulators". This thing would be called "red line simulator" on Steam, and would likely still sell well.

Interesting idea, but I don't want to use my GPS location to try it out. I wish it were possible to manually input a location by tapping.

If you decline to share your location, you can then search for a city.

There's no way to know this until you first tap "Get My Location".

Reminding me of that place in india on a coastal temple, where there was an arrow put up in ancient time. It has a text in Sanskrit that says that it points to South pole and there is no land between the arrow and south pole. Not able to recall the name. Something like that

Somnath temple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnath_temple

As far as I can tell the current temple at Somnath was built in 1951, hardly ancient.

Wikipedia mentions that Muslim invaders have destroyed the temple multiple times over the centuries.

Yes, that's why I said current. I see nothing indicating that the arrow to the south pole predates the 1951 construction.

The constantly spinning globe is infuriating UX. I'm not sure what the point of this is; all it does it show a chord on a spinning perfect sphere (which the Earth isn't)

'Thesis project'... which part of this requires a university education?

I looked for a way to stop it spinning but didn't find one.

You could enter app.three.controls.autoRotate=false in the console in the DevTools (F12).

> on a spinning perfect sphere (which the Earth isn't)

It's pretty damn close, though, to 0.3%.

For Spain (my country), New Zealand is straight at the other end. Neat.

It took me a while to find anywhere interesting to me (Canada and Spain) that actually lined up. Unfortunately Valencia falls into the ocean, but Madrid lines up with south east coast of the North Island of New Zealand!

Undersea by rail. Ninety minutes from New York to Paris: 5600 km

Too bad we can't pull it off with current technology.

Guess we will just fantasize about it in song then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivjr3f8xg

The future is bright: wheels in space, underwater trains, and everyone gets a spandex jacket.

According to "How long would it take to fall through the center of the Earth?" [1], it would take 2 * 42 min = 84 min, ignoring air resistance, and, (probably) survival of the passengers.

[1] https://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-earth.cfm

This approximation accounts for this fact: "As you fall there is less and less mass between you and the center so there is less and less to pull you down"

More (interesting!) flaws of the 42 minute calculation are shown here: https://www.livescience.com/50312-how-long-to-fall-through-e...

This approximation accounts for non-uniform density of the earth:

> Klotz based his calculations on the internal structure of the planet as determined from seismic data. While the Earth's crust has a density less than about 187 lbs. per cubic foot (3 grams per cubic centimeter), Earth's center has a density of about 811 lbs. per cubic foot (13 grams per cubic centimeter). The density of the planet does not rise in a straightforward manner the farther down one goes — there is a sharp 50 percent increase in density at the boundary of the planet's mantle and its outer core about 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below Earth's surface.

> Now, using a more realistic model of the Earth, Klotz finds the fall would take only about 38 minutes and 11 seconds, about 4 minutes faster than thought.

Why wouldn't the passengers survive? Even though they will reach terrifying speeds, at no point will their acceleration exceed a relatively gentle 9.8ms^-2

it gets quite warm down there.

Enters The Ever Given.

Observation: there is a ton of water on this planet.

Nitpicking: There is a lot of surface covered with water, but not too much water in total. Water is a thin layer over a rocky base. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/all-earths-water-a-single-...

I haven't even got down one metre yet. I hoped I'd be done before it gets dark. How is anyone else doing?

Neat, but do you think it may ever be possible to build these kind super tunnels somehow? How wide?

Is there even a material that can withstand the temperature of Earth's core?

Sure, with enough active cooling :).

The tunnel could easily double as an extremely powerful geothermal plant.

I think it may be easier to build a "lava submarine" ...

Not only that but wouldn't you basically need a rocket in order to get from the core to the surface?

I guess you just "fall" into the tunnel, and then your journey ends with speed=0 at the other end because of energy conservation.

Friction will likely mean that you don't come up to the same height as you left.

You'll just grab the rope that's hanging in the tunnel at the other end, and climb out :)

we have barely even made a dent in the crust, I don’t think that would happen in our lifetime.

Depends, if you are going right through the earth's core it will probably be forever impossible (though maybe someone in materials science knows more than me?). However if you are trying to go closer to the surface it is possible today, it isn't the most direct route, but on the other hand you probably want to pop up every once in while anyway. New York to eastern LA is only a question of economics, we have the technology, and you would want to have a station several cities along the way as long as you are digging so the tunnel wouldn't go deep. Note that I said eastern LA, you can't get too far west without crossing a major fault line and that is not something I think we can handle. (I'm not aware of any fault lines on the rest of the path, but they would stop this tunnel - I wouldn't be surprised if someone pointed one out)

Eventually, but given that we have yet to even build a submerged floating tunnel[0] it will be awhile.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submerged_floating_tunnel

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bb/Br... (tunnel #2 in this image)

there would be a lot of "dirt" to get rid of! Maybe it could be used to reclaim some land from the sea or build new islands.

To all those thinking: "this doesn't do much": try it on mobile.

It still doesn't do much. Mobile version just changes the input controls to using geolocation and motion sensors.

Other than that the functionality is still the same; it doesn't do more on mobile.

I meant you probably have to use it on mobile to get the full experience as intended by the developer, and you very well knew I meant that. You just chose to be pedantic to someone on the internet, congrats. I hope it improves your life.

I did not choose to be pedantic and I'm sorry you concluded that. I also did not get much meaning into your own comment other that it suggested there was "more to be seen".

I commented because, having tried it on desktop and then on mobile, the experience is still fairly similar. Most people commenting on it "not doing much" were generally expecting more functionality -e.g. some additional visualization of the tunnel or whatever-, not just a different input control. Telling people to try it again but on mobile would probably not make them find such additional value.

I'm sad you took this so personally and so negatively.

Perhaps this could be also called "find my antipodeans".

I would love for one of these that stayed in the same hemisphere.

This really doesn't simulate anything.

Disappointed. I need to see lava.

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