Died at Planet Core?

after digging down to a moon's depths, the screen stopped going down any further (so i guess i've reach it's core). i'm walking along in a tunnel, suddenly the screen goes black, then the reanimation screen comes up and i've lost 30% of pixels (ie, I died).

Is this 'normal' behaviour if i reach a planet's core?

 

It's normal for a moon's core. Moon core's don't have lava so if you fall into it you die. When the screen stops moving down that's a big hint that you need to go back up some, cause if you fall any farther down it's instant death.

 

Really hope that is on the to do list to be changed. What's the fun of having an actual planet to walk around on if you can't dig a tunnel all of the way through it?

 

So what? you just wanna fall in the core and get flipped around and dig up the other side?

 

Sure. Increase gravity as well and once you hit the center point, FLIP! Granted, it may very well be a pain in the ass to do depending on how the planet maps are constructed.

 

I wouldn't mind the simple Minecraft-esque implementation (just having undiggable rock at the core). Just dying at the core is silly.

Being able to travel to the other side of the map via the core would definitely be cool though. If you jump into a hole in the bottom of the map, it could teleport you to the closest open hole at the other side, and spit you out there with the same velocity you came in.

 

Yes, if you dig deep enough you will fall and die.

 

sounds like a reasonable solution

 

Decrease
At planet centre gravity should be 0, with an almost linear decrease from surface to centre.

 

Well planets have a core made of lava, you could follow that clear around the planet if you wanted to. I think the issue came up in the OP because moons are missing that lava core for some reason and you can just fall into nothingness.

 

Eh, did some googling after you responded and it seems that most likely gravity would increase as one nears the core(due to increased density) and, once the core is breached, gravity would then decrease. Learned something new today and it didn't involve me hating humanity, nifty.

From a game design standpoint, I'd consider increasing gravity by a factor between 1.5 and 2x times normal until the core is breached and then let it decrease at a max somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 of base then allow the flip.

True and I'm saddened to additionally learn that such lava can not be harvested. However, it still wouldn't stop this insanity from taking place:

 

Remember the core elevator in the new Total Recall movie? It features the passengers going weightless at the flip in the center.

 

Correct, for planets with dense cores anyway (such as Earth).

 

Dug through a planets core (with ice ) You can just see at the bottom where even the lava goes away, my character actually started to sink through the blocks, there's just 1 layer of ice between me and falling in.

 

Yeah, that's why I posted the pic.

 

Great diagram

 

That's due to the reversal of gravity and huge speeds (and I think spinning - been a while since I've seen the movie) combined. If you just fell into the core gravity would increase (and possibly kill you but don't quote me on that) I don't think we ever get a very good look at how the mechanism works, so I'm not sure how viable this would be in reality. (Almost no doubt it would be so expensive material, time, and money-wise to build that it would never be reasonable in the first place)

Fg (force of gravity) = GMm/r^2 (Gravitational Constant, about 6.67x10^-11) times the mass of the Earth (5.98x10^24 I think... It's a lot) times the mass of the object being pulled (i.e. you) all divided by the square of the radius (or distance from the very center point of the planet).

Therefore, the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the distance from the core, meaning the farther you are from it, the less effect its gravity has on you.
If in the middle of the core, you wouldn't be pulled in any direction though since gravity is pulling you to the core and you're at the exact point it's trying to get you to; but you would have to be very close to, if not exactly in, the exact center of mass.

At least that's what it seems to me with my (somewhat limited) understanding of gravitation.

 

Think of it that each piece of matter in the planet is pulling every part of you towards it. If there's roughly equal amounts on each side of you (eg. center of a planet), the forces cancel out, simple
In the case of a singularity (eg. black hole), all the mass is in a single point, which causes all the effects you'd expect.

Of course with Earth the core is more dense than the mantle/crust, so gravity slightly increases as you dig deeper into the crust. But as has been explained, the gravity starts to decrease again as you go even deeper as the core above you is pulling you back up.

So, in Starbound, you'd expect gravity to behave differently with depth depending on which planet you went to, as different planets could have different core densities.

 

That only works when you assume the planet is a point, this works well outside the planet.
Inside you have to apply Gauss laws, for constant density this gives linear decrease.
For a good model you have a great diagram above.
Also velocity has no impact on perceived force, only acceleration does (e.g. Coriolis force).
Edit: in free fall, in the void you would not perceive gravity. But with atmosphere you have to account air drag and pressure.
Starbound can do with much simpler models

 

They should add a layer of one block Bridgmanite to the bottom of all planets and moons, that can't be dug even with admin permissions.

As for asteroids, the gravity should pull you towards the asteroid when you are under it or far to the sides instead keep falling.