Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Aurora_Fatalis t1_j5nxaxf wrote

Reply to comment by cecex88 in What are the forces on Earth’s Inner Core that change its speed? by BayRunner

To what extent is it kept warm simply by heat retention from primordial times and the formation of the earth? As in, how does the thermal energy generated by the core/mantle over the past few billion years compare to the thermal energy lost and the thermal energy it started out with when the planet was a mostly molten blob?

I guess to simplify the question, I'm curious whether, in the absence of radioactive decay in the mantle, we'd be another Mars right now.

5

cecex88 t1_j5nzkcf wrote

The main heat sources in the core are secular cooling (i.e. losing primordial heat), latent heat due to the ongoing solidification of the inner region, compositional energy (essentially gravitational energy, the lighter elements in the core do not solidify and some fraction of the core solidify these elements rise up to the liquid part) and radioactive decay.

The estimates in Earth's Core (by Cormier et al., nice book) are around 0.3 TW for radioactive decay and a few TW (2 to 6) each for the others.

As an order of magnitude estimation, compositional changes, phase transition and original heat loss contributes equally, while radiogenic heat is only a minor contribution.

The heat balance we measure at the surface has obviously much more than this. We have to take into account the secular cooling of the mantle itself (16 TW), plus the heat production of continents (8TW) and again the mantle (11 TW), which are mainly radiogenic (data here from the Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics).
Note that every estimate, despite being in line with scientific consensus, is subject to high uncertainties, due to the very difficult nature of these kind of measures/models.

To close going slightly OT, this combination of heat production and heat loss is the driving force of hot spots and plate tectonics. Which means that the cooling dynamics of the earth is responsible for essentially the entirity of what we observe in the solid earth. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tectonic movement, but also interactions with surface geomorphology are all byproducts of a ball of molten rock cooling.

8

RickSchwifty t1_j5o0byk wrote

As far as I understand earth will inevitably become similar to mars: as the earths core cools down and solidifies our magnetic field begins to disintegrate, seismic and volcanic activities will disappear which ultimately will thin out our atmosphere to a point where life will be impossible. We talking billions of years ofc.

According to science only half of earths internal heat stems from radioactivity, the rest being primordial heat. This in turn means our planet is obviously much cooler than it used to be.

https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-still-retains-much-its-original-heat

2