The following is a “slides and notes” version of a talk, written and presented to the Johns Hopkins University Society of Physics Students by Andrew E. Love Jr, a long-standing subscriber, and frequent contributor, to the larryniven-l mailing list.

NOTES:

It should be noted that the hollow earth case is one that a lot of authors get wrong. There is no gravitational force felt inside a really hollow sphere - so stories in which people are standing on the inside surface are wrong. On the other hand, if the sphere has an internal atmosphere, then there will be a small gravitational force pulling inwards, as Hal Clement noted in Still River.

By the way, the size of the black hole holding all the earth's mass is pretty small (2GM/c/c=0.44 cm), so missing it by a few miles keeps you well away from its event horizon and keeps your maximum speed well less than light speed (no relativistic effects), but tides might be a problem (see tide equations on upcoming pages).

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