Earth’s Core Is Cooling Faster Than Expected

Latest research on the interiors of the earth have some fascinating finding on the inner temperatures of the planet. But how will the heat inside of the earth affect us, and should we be worried?

Till now we were dealing with global warming. But now geologists have us sweating for another cause. The core of the earth is cooling down faster than expected, and it could spell bad for our planet.

The Crust

Our planet mainly has three layers of matter, from the outside to the inside. Namely the crust, the mantle and the core. The Crust is the layer on which we live. It is brittle, thus, when affected by earthquakes or volcanoes, it tends to crack up. Then comes the mantle which makes up about 50% volume of the earth. then comes the molten outer core and the solid, highly compressed inner core.

A substance can lose heat by three methods. Conduction, convection and radiation. What happens when you boil water in a pan? If you look closely, you’d notice, that one column of water is rising rapidly from the bottom of the pan, and water on the surface slowly sinks to the bottom, in a circular fashion. This is known as convection.

The Mantle

The mantle is responsible for dissipating heat from the outer core to the crust, very slowly, so that life on the crust, does not get turned to ash in a matter of a few minutes. The heat lost from the outer core is in the form of convection. Molten iron and nickel, just like the boiling water in the pan, move away from the inner core towards the mantle, dissipates its heat and then returns back to the inner core. This circular motion of conductive iron and nickel, produces an electric and a magnetic field. These fields are projected around the earth.

The Magnetic field around the earth, is responsible for protecting life from the harmful radiations from the sun and cosmos. It basically acts like an invisible shield. It is also responsible for navigation. No magnetic field would mean no compass, and Vasco Da Gama would never have discovered India, and Cristopher Columbus would probably have ended up in a shipwreck.

Will The Earth Be Wiped Out By Our Sun?

Now that all the discoveries have been made by the past explorers, why does it matter if the earth’s core is cooling down? Well, Just like we said previously, a huge storm of cosmic radiation would bombard the surface of the earth and boom! no more life. Even satellites need the magnetic field to navigate around the earth. they would get disoriented and now you don’t have the internet, that is only if humanity finds a way to survive the catastrophic destruction by deadly x-rays and gamma rays.

Do we seriously need to worry though? Well, the whole process of earth losing its magnetic field shield would take around a billion years. By then earth would probably move out of the sun’s habitable zone. more on that in our video about “Will the earth be wiped out by our sun”. So, you really don’t need to worry. But what are you supposed to do with the rest of the time, now that the earth is not getting destroyed anytime sooner?

If you like this blog and want to read a similar one then do not forget to try this:

https://explified.com/supernova-the-death-of-a-star/

 

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