Let’s Visit The Center Of The Earth

Hearth_5.aiWhat do you know about the Earth’s core? Probably nothing.

Don’t feel bad. Most people know little about what’s going on deep under our feet. There’s a new study published in Nature which says our core is rotating at a different speed than the rest of Earth. It’s variable. Sometimes a little faster, sometimes slower.

Like I said, most of us know nothing about the center of the Earth.

It’s hot there. Really hot.

From phys.org: The Earth’s core consists mainly of a sphere of liquid iron at temperatures above 4000 degrees and pressures of more than 1.3 million atmospheres.

I’ll do the math. That’s around 7,200&#176 Fahrenheit. Have I mentioned it’s hot!

The very center of the core is so hot and under so much pressure the iron turns solid again. Of course this is all theory. We’ve never explored the Earth’s core even though it’s closer than Hawaii, about 4,000 miles straight down.

Earth’s my subject because there’s been lots of talk lately about sending men to the Moon and Mars. Why don’t we explore the Earth instead?

We wouldn’t send men to Earth’s core, but we should find ways of tapping this incredible and practically limitless supply of heat and energy. I have heard how difficult it would be, requiring engineering skill and techniques far beyond anything we possess today.

Could it be more difficult than sending men to Mars?

2 thoughts on “Let’s Visit The Center Of The Earth”

  1. There’s so much everywhere to be explored, we can’t do all of it at once. Especially when the government is cutting research money.
    Then of course there’s the divide in the scientific community; people interested in space want to go there, people interested in earth want to study what’s here. Kind of like a bunch of baby birds all screaming for the worm mom just brought. How do you decide who gets it?
    I’d love to see more research both in space AND on earth . But then I’d like to see less money spent on war and the military, more money spent on schools, helping the poor (especially the working poor) and homelessness.
    But that’s me.

  2. We’re studying the layers of the earth and heat transfer in my 7th gr science class now.

    An interesting idea to capture the heat and energy from inner earth, to be use on the surface, and even more interesting thought that perhaps we should spend more resources on that than Mars exploration. However, as energy can not be created nor destroyed, at least not without the loss of matter, I believe that using energy resources from even the mantle, would be catastrophic to the balance (using that word loosely!) of the planet.

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