Jolly good thing some of those isotopes last millions of years or we would be in a permanent ice age
I wonder if we should try and stop it - after all we have no idea what god's plans are to decomission it?
Obviously drivel and bollix, written by people with shit-fer-brains and believed by the brain dead.
That is what the Martians did, and look what happened to their planet? Brian
Indeed, but its fun to imagine innit? Brian
It's not clear to me what "half the earth's heat" means. Are the constituents of the earth very different from other planets? Neptune has a surface temperature less than -200 degrees celsius, which suggests to me that the energy from the sun is much greater than that from nuclear fission.
Also the article says that the nuclear energy inside the earth amounts to 4 times the total energy usage by people on the earth. Surely the energy from the sun amounts to far more than 8 times human usage?
It must be drivel because we all know the universe is only just over five thousand years old anyway, just ask harry.
Quite an old article.
I remember when you could usually expect reasonably accurate science in magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American. I imagine that the numbers are probably correct, but every physicist I know would make a very clear distinction between fission, the splitting of a nucleus into two portions, and the various forms of radioactive decay which are the source of the energy which maintains the temperature of the earth's core. I think it was Lord Kelvin, before the discovery of radioactivity, who estimated from the measured heat flux that the earth was molten about five million years ago. And was very worried about it because that seemed too short a time to explain evolution.
And what the hell is "the flow of the antithesis of these neutral particles".
I think it means 'half the GEOTHERMAL heat.
"The flow of heat from Earth's interior to the surface is estimated at
47 terawatts[1] and comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of the Earth."Earth's internal heat powers most geological processes and drives plate tectonics. Despite its geological significance, this heat energy coming from Earth's interior is actually only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar radiation."
Yes, IIRC its about 100 times - at least for the land masses with the people.
Yes and over what time exactly? Its another one of those we are not sure what it means but its interesting type of stories. Brian
Whoever wrote and edited that article should be shot. They managed to totally misunderstand and/or misrepresent an easily understood and interesting paper.
The orginal paper is here:
The abstract, which does a much better job of explaining things that the scientific american article, is:
The Earth has cooled since its formation, yet the decay of radiogenic isotopes, and in particular uranium, thorium and potassium, in the planet?s interior provides a continuing heat source. The current total heat flux from the Earth to space is 44.2 +/- 1.0 TW, but the relative contributions from residual primordial heat and radiogenic decay remain uncertain. However, radiogenic decay can be estimated from the flux of geoneutrinos, electrically neutral particles that are emitted during radioactive decay and can pass through the Earth virtually unaffected. Here we combine precise measurements of the geoneutrino flux from the Kamioka Liquid-Scintillator Antineutrino Detector, Japan, with existing measurements from the Borexino detector, Italy. We find that decay of uranium-238 and thorium-232 together contribute
20.0 +8.8/-8.6 TW to Earth?s heat flux. The neutrinos emitted from the decay of potassium-40 are below the limits of detection in our experiments, but are known to contribute 4 TW. Taken together, our observations indicate that heat from radioactive decay contributes about half of Earth?s total heat flux. We therefore conclude that Earth?s primordial heat supply has not yet been exhausted.
Then you've been nodding off. Again. Why d'ye imagine that we think the best place to put stainless steel barrels of nucular waste is into a deep ocean trench where it will be subducted into the earth'e mantle? Precisely because the interior of the planet is already full of that stuff.
ISTR you were in denial that nuclear fission at the earth's core existed a while back.
Neptune is a "gas giant " not at all like the earth.
Are you sure ?.
The Japanese are trying to capture neutrinos with an experiment deep under the ice at one of the poles and the French have an experiment 2 km under water and pointing DOWN, trying to collect neutrinos that have hit earth near Australia and travelled right through the core and out the other side. Also, nothing detected so far.
Not so sure about fission at the earth's core, but natural fission reactors were operating 2 billion years ago
You're not suggesting that the sun is responsible for global warming are you? In that case cover the earth with cloud to keep out the heat.
The more cloud the better, that's what all the contrails from planes are really for, to keep the daily temperature range under control :)
Watching a couple of 4 engined heavies heading West yesterday afternoon.... They appeared to be at the same height, travelling at the same speed and separated by about 15 wingspan lengths.
One was producing a con trail stretching back to the horizon and the other much shorter!
They also have a rather strange way of describing the surface in that the surface is where the clouds touch space.
On some web-sites they talk about how much more or less a person would weigh if standing on the surface of these gas giants, which seems to me a rather meaningless notion.
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