Caption: This computer-generated image shows the different layers of the Earth: The outer solid crust, the viscous upper and lower mantle, the liquid outer core, and the solid inner core.
Posted on 11/10/2011 5:47:19 AM PST by decimon
Caption: This computer-generated image shows the different layers of the Earth: The outer solid crust, the viscous upper and lower mantle, the liquid outer core, and the solid inner core.
Credit: ESRF
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ESRF inaugurates unique new X-ray facility
Grenoble -- Scientists will soon be exploring matter at temperatures and pressures so extreme it can only be produced for microseconds using powerful pulsed lasers. Matter in such states is present in the Earth's liquid iron core, 2500 kilometres beneath the surface, and also in elusive "warm dense matter" inside large planets like Jupiter. A new X-ray beamline ID24 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, allows a new quality of exploration of the last white spot on our globe: the centre of the Earth.
We know surprisingly little about the interior of the Earth. The pressure at the centre can be calculated accurately from the propagation of Earthquake waves, and it is about three and a half million times atmospheric pressure. The temperature at the centre of the Earth, however, is unknown, but it is thought to be roughly as hot as the surface of the sun.
ID24, which was inaugurated today, opens new fields of science, being able to observe like in a time-lapse film sequence many rapid processes, whether laser-heating of iron to 10.000 degrees, charge reactions in new batteries or catalysts cleaning pollutants. It is the first of eight new beamlines built within the ESRF Upgrade Programme, a 180 million Euros investment over eight years to maintain the world-leading role of the ESRF. ID24 extends the existing capabilities at the ESRF in X-ray absorption spectroscopy to sample volumes twenty times smaller and time resolutions one thousand times better than in the past.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Grand central station ping.
At the very teeny tiny itty bitty center there may be a MINIATURE black hole however.
Oh, have faith. Some of us are capable of having intelligent discussion.
BTW.....that last white spot is called Earth. De rest of it be Erf.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Erf, folks report a gentle warming sensation on the soles of their feet and a strange translucence that makes it seem one can see their foot bones right through their shoes.
I maintain that the pressure at the center of the earth is zero. Matter there is subject to a uniform force field generated by the uniform distribution of matter around it. When I've discussed this with geology professors on my occasional college visits, they have either been speechless or asked if I would be interested in writing a paper. (I'm not, and my credentials are minimal. I am a non-academic with math degrees.)
ML/NJ
A report on a Mitt Romney fundraiser?
Good old planet earth.....the greatest thermos in the universe.
This doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not a geologist, but if it were that hot, then wouldn't it show that the earth would NOT burn up if it touched the surface of the sun? If it is already enduring such temps, then the sun shouldn't pose a big problem.
This may sound like a dumb question to any geophysicists out there, but if the temperature at the center of the Earth is so darned hot, why isn’t it the same for Mars - or the moon?
I mean, is the heat being produced by gravitational compression, or is there something else at work here?
From past discussions I've gathered, rightly or wrongly, that the moon is a factor. Lunar gravity affecting the liquid core as it does the oceans or some such.
You'll probably want to take that with a big grain pending further responses.
Compression produces part of the heat, but most of it is from radioactive decay of Uranium. The core is one bigazz fission reactor.
I never would have guessed either reply. Learn something every day. Thank you both.
So... I’m thinking that without all that uranium, we’d be as cold and dead as the moon?
The heat in the interior of the earth is thought to be produced by decay of radioactive elements.
The earth would not “burn up” if it touched the surface of the sun; it would vaporize. The earth is not destroyed by the high temperature in the core because there are thousands of miles of cooler material between the surface and the core, and because the extreme pressure in the core prevents vaporization.
When the geology professor asked if you would be interested in writing a paper on the subject, that was the equivalent of a nice southern grandma saying “Why, bless your heart” : ),
Actually, no.
Maybe you wouldn't understand as you seem prone to ignorant remarks.
ML/NJ
Net gravity is near zero at the center, and low for most of the core. The pressure must be all heat generated.
I know earth is a good insulator, but after the amount of time the earth has been around, and given the vents we have (volcanoes, etc), if the core were really heating the planet to the temps suggested, we'd never have winter, or polar ice caps.
Don't get me wrong, I know the core is warmer than the surface, but to those temps?
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