This actually works. All you have to do is decelerate the train once (because it's spinning with the world while you build it).
And solve the trivial engineering task of reducing all friction and air resistance to zero. Oh, and that of getting on and off the train.
And solve the trivial engineering task of reducing all friction and air resistance to zero.
Well shit, anyone can do that. Just put a little WD40 on it
(シ_ _)シ
You build your track dead straight - like, not conforming to the surface direct through the crust straight. Now the train accelerates downhill for the first half of the journey, and decelerates uphill for the second, neatly coming to a stop at the destination. Oddly enough, in the spherical cow universe where you build this, all the maths cancels such that you get a constant travel time regardless of the start and end locations. On earth it's about 40 minutes
You need energy to decelerate, though.
Just use magnets.
Pls send my Nobel price by mail, I'm not good at speeches.
Fridge magnets are the secret of infinite energy
you could conceivably get on and off the train with shuttle "station" trains that travel on parallel tracks to catch up with the main train
🤔 A vacuum tube maglev would do the trick.
Actually Isaac Arthur talks about something like that on his channel. An Orbital Ring, he calls it.
I think I had this idea when I was ten. I knew I should have patented it. Fuck.
I swear I came up with the iphone... my design was a triple flip phone, screen up top, keypad in the middle and an ipod wheel down bottom
Why? Because fuck physics, that's why!
Just tie it to the moon.
It's a high tide train ride!
Ride the tides then
Or to the sun
This would be possible if there was a material unaffected by gravity, right?
I think in that case, the earth would just depart the location of the train, leaving it drifting in space.
I was assuming the rails are strong enough to keep the train on the Earth, but I guess infinite friction from the movement and rotation of the Earth probably isn't survivable by any railway material. Hypothetically, if you had a material unaffected by gravity (train), and a material that is absolutely invincible (the rails, and they are anchored to the center of the Earth), now does it work?
No, the problem is not gravity, is that the train attached to earth has velocity dictated by the Earth movements, and keeps it because of inertia. In your theoretical experiment, the train would be launched on space at constant velocity.