Sharlinator t1_j63i31s wrote
Reply to comment by JustAPerspective in Earth's inner core may be slowing down, but “Nothing cataclysmic is happening,” says Hrvoje Tkalcic, a geophysicist at Australian National University. “The inner core is now more in sync with the rest of the planet than a decade ago when it was spinning a bit faster.” by clayt6
It’s not a “magnetic engine” in any relevant sense. It’s a huge rotating ball of iron and nickel and conservation of angular momentum is a thing! Truly ludicrous amounts of momentum would have to be transferred somewhere else for it to stop rotating.
(Now, to be fair, a mechanism does exist that slowly bleeds off Earth’s rotational momentum, and has done so for billions of years: the moon and its tidal forces. In the far future Earth would become tidally locked with the moon, and rotate very slowly, if the sun didn’t become a red giant first. But somehow only slowing down the core? That would require magic.)
Anyway, my use of “absolutely” should be taken in the context of the discussion, just like everything else. There’s no reason to add some sort of an “except via magic” to every other sentence, pedantic Redditors notwithstanding.
JustAPerspective t1_j63vchz wrote
>It’s not a “magnetic engine” in any relevant sense.
Preposterous. Relevance is a matter of perspective; your prerequisite appears to be something along the lines of "if it ain't human-made it ain't real"?
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>It’s a huge rotating ball of iron and nickel and conservation of angular momentum is a thing! Truly ludicrous amounts of momentum would have to be transferred somewhere else for it to stop rotating.
...humans think.
See, until the 1960s, the existence of the core-as-a-core wasn't known. So the "obvious reality" you're assuming is younger than television.
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>(Now, to be fair, a mechanism does exist that slowly bleeds off Earth’s rotational momentum, and has done so for billions of years: the moon and its tidal forces. In the far future Earth would become tidally locked with the moon, and rotate very slowly, if the sun didn’t become a red giant first.)
Yes, that's how an engine operates on a timescale different from the ones humans focus on. You came that closet to getting the idea.
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> But somehow only slowing down the core? That would require magic.)
Magic is, by definition, merely reality: Magic is defined as a "supernatural force which influences reality" and "supernatural" merely means "attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature" - and the "laws of nature" were written by humans who do not know everything.
See the one constant limitation here? Human understanding.
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>Anyway, my use of “absolutely” should be taken in the context of the discussion, just like everything else.
No - your use of a word will be taken at face value - the only use words have in true information exchange. If you are unable to use the words accurately or sincerely, that's your concern to manage.
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