At the Earth’s crust, temperatures remain relatively constant all year round. But, beneath the crust, beneath our feet is an incredibly hot place – the heart of the Earth!
From driving plate tectonics to keeping us safe from solar radiation, the heart of the Earth is not only interesting but also, to some extent, essential for life on Earth. But, how long can the heart of the Earth stay hot?
Read on to find out.
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How Hot is the Middle Earth?
How Hot is the Heart of the Earth?
Experts believe that the Earth’s core exceeds temperatures above the sun’s surface – more than 18,032 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius).
How did it get so hot in the first place?
One theory is that, about 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System was made up of a cloud of cold dust particles. This cloud of gas and dust was disturbed and began to collapse, as gravity pulled. all together, creating a large spinning disc.
The center of the disc became the Sun, and the grains in the outer rings turned into large balls of gas and molten liquid that cooled and condensed to take a solid shape.
At the same time, the surface of the newly created planet was under constant explosion from large bodies crashing into the planet, releasing enormous heat inside it, melting the cosmic dust found there.
When the Earth was created, it was a clothing a member of a hot rock. Radioactive decay and heat left over from the formation of the planet caused this ball to become hotter. Finally, after about 500 million years, the temperature of the Earth reached the melting point of iron – about 1,538 ° Celsius (2,800 ° Fahrenheit).
Let this be Earth’s molten, rocky material to move even faster. Pretty much influential material, such as silicates, water, and even air, remained near a planet outside and would have been healthy and bark early. Drops of iron, nickel and other heavy metals gravitated to the center of the Earth, forming an early heart. This process is called planetary differentiation.
Unlike the mineral-rich bark and crust, the core is thought to be made up almost entirely of metal – in particular, iron and nickel. Although the inner heart is thought to be a solid ball with a radius around it 760 miles (1,220 km), with a surface temperature of 5,700 K (5,430 ° C; 9,800 ° F); the heart is thought to be outward a mobile cover of about 2,400 km (1,500 miles) thick and reaching temperatures ranging from 3,000 K (2,730 ° C; 4,940 ° F) to 8,000 K (7,730 ° C; 13,940 ° F).
It is thought that the heart is so hot because decomposition of radioactive elements, heat left over from planetary formation, and heat released as the outer core melts near end with the heart within.
So, the heart is very hot, but how long can it stay hot?
Scientists at the University of Maryland say they will be able to answer the question within the next four years.
Driving the motion of the Earth’s tectonic plate and powering its magnetic field requires a lot of power. The energy comes from the center of the Earth, but scientists are convinced that the heart is very slowly cooling.
What makes the center of the Earth hot?
Keeping the Earth’s core warm provides two sources of “fuel”: primordial energy left over from the planet’s formation and nuclear energy that results from natural radioactive decay.
The creation of the Earth came at a time when the solar system was full of energy. In its infancy, meteorites would constantly invade the forming planet, causing too much breaking force. At the time, the Earth was full of volcanic activity.
How long does the heart of the Earth last?
From the beginning, the planet has cooled dramatically. However, there is still residual heat from the creation of the Earth. While the primordial heat has largely dissipated, other heat continues to warm the Earth’s clothing and crust.
Radioactive materials occur naturally in deep areas on Earth, with some living around the crust. Through the process of natural decomposition of the radioactive material, heat is released.
Scientists know that heat flows from the Earth’s interior into space at a level around it 44 × 1012 W (TW). What they do not know, however, is what level of heat is prime.
The issue is that if the Earth’s heat is largely primitive, it will cool much faster. However, if the heat is generated mainly due to radioactive decay, it is likely that the Earth’s heat will last much longer.
While that’s a bit scary, some speculations for the cooling of the Earth’s heart see it take off tens of billions of years, or as much as 91 billion years. That’s a pretty long time, and of course, the sun seems to burn out long before the heart – around 5 billion years.
Why is the temperature of the Earth’s core important?
The Earth’s core keeps the temperature constant, but more importantly, it keeps the Earth’s magnetic field in place. The Earth’s magnetic field is created by the outer core movement of molten metal.
This large magnetic field expands into space and holds in place charged particles that are normally collected from the solar winds.
The fields create an inaccessible barrier in a place that will prevent the fastest, most dynamic electricity from reaching the Earth. The fields are called Van Allen belts, and they are the ones that enable life to thrive on the Earth ‘s surface. Without the shield of the magnetic field, the solar wind would affect the Earth ‘s atmosphere ozone coating which protects life from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
The accumulation of cut grains shatters and catches the sun’s wind preventing it from peeling the Earth into the atmosphere. Without it, our planet would be barren and lifeless. It is believed that Mars once had a Van Allen belt that also protected it from the sun’s deadly wind. However, once the heart cooled, it lost its wing, and is now still a desolate wasteland.
How Long does Earth’s Fuel Last?
Currently, many scientific models can estimate the amount of fuel still to drive Earth’s engines. But the results are quite different and it is difficult to draw a final conclusion. At this time, the level of primordial and radioactive energy remaining is unknown.
“I am one of those scientists who created a performance model of the Earth and estimated the amount of fuel inside the Earth today,” said one of the study’s authors, William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University. Maryland.
“It simply came to our notice then. At this stage of my career, I don’t care if I’m right or wrong, I just want to find out the answer. “However, researchers believe that with today’s technological advances, a more accurate prediction can be made.
To find out how much nuclear fuel is left on Earth, the researchers use advanced sensors to detect some of the least known subatomic particles of science – geoneutrinos. Geoneutrino grains are the byproducts generated from nuclear reactions that occur within human stars, supernovae, black holes, and nuclear reactors.
Finding out how much fuel is left
Finding antineutrino grains is a very difficult task. Large finders the size of a small office building are buried more than 0.6 miles (kilometers) down to the Earth’s crust. The depth may seem like too much pressure; however, a shield must be created from cosmic rays that can cause wrong objects.
In operation, the detector can detect antineutrinos when struck by hydrogen atoms inside the device. After the crash, two clear showers are found, vaguely announcing the incident.
By counting the number of crashes, scientists can find out the number of uranium and thorium atoms that are still inside our planet.
Unfortunately, the KamLAND detectors in Japan and Borexino in Italy detect only about 16 events per year, making the process very slow. However, with three new detectors expected to come online in 2020 – the SNO + detector in Canada and the Jinping and JUNO detectors in China – researchers expect more An additional 500 events detected each year.
“As soon as we collect three years of antineutrino data from the five detectors, we are confident that we will have developed the correct amount of fuel for the Earth and can measure the amount of fuel left within the planet. Working out land, ”said McDonough.
The Jinping detector in China is over four times larger all the detectors so far. While the detector is great, the JUNO detector will be pretty impressive 20 times more na custom detectors.
“We will tell you exactly how much radioactive energy there is on Earth about the Earth’s past consumption rate and its future fuel budget,” McDonough explained.
“By showing how quickly the planet has cooled since its birth, we can estimate how long this fuel will last. ”
When JUNO comes online; hopefully in 2021 – the data collected should help scientists like McDonough estimate the time it takes for the Earth’s heart to cool. Until then, rest assured, any estimates made are likely to run into the hundreds of millions, possibly billions of years into the future.
Therefore, there are no plans to move to a new planet any time soon.