To: ig who wrote (88918 ) 8/19/2002 7:34:54 AM From: E. Charters Read Replies (1) | Respond to Why then does pressure not decrease the deeper one goes in the sea It does. When you get to the bottom of the Marianna Trench it is so low pressure in fact that you are in danger of exploding. sheeesh! Course not. But not much gravitational mass has accumulated behind you by that time. The gravitational pull is still overwhelmingly in one direction.And of course the pressure created by that liguid mass, being attracted towards the centre is enormous.central tendency effect begins to decrease markedly. In fact, gravitational pull or acceleration is at a maximum at the surface of the earth.. as you begin to descend it starts to cancel by degrees. At the centre it is perfectly balanced so there is no net gravity in any direction at the centre of the earth. Ergo there is weightlessness. But the two halves of the earth, so to speak, opposed to each other, still attract each other with a force, so there is pressure between them. Still, if you hollowed out a space in the centre there would be no tendency for you to fall to either side. You would have no weight and would float in that space. But if you brought the two said earth-half masses separately together with nothing holding them apart and you were in between, well of course you would be crushed. So there is substantial pressure at the centre because of this balanced gravitational attraction of the total surrounding mass.
