Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Temperature at Earth's core may exceed 9,900 degrees, report shows

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Thursday, September 30, 1999

Temperature at Earth's core may exceed 9,900 degrees, report shows

Scripps Howard News Service

Boy is it ever hot down there! A new computer model estimates that the molten iron core near the center of the Earth exceeds 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
   "This is only the start. The computational approach will help us understand in detail what the Earth is made of, which, in turn, has major implications for how the solar system was formed," said Michael Gillan, a physics professor at University College in London and co-author of the report published today in the journal Nature.
   Scientists have been struggling for decades to determine the temperature of the molten core, which surrounds a solid sphere of mostly iron. A number of experiments have sought to re-create the pressures and temperatures near the center of the Earth by exerting enormous pressure on diamonds. Other geologists have studied the core by following shock waves released by earthquakes.
   The results of these experiments have differed by more than 2,000 degrees, leaving the findings controversial, and continuing the mystery over how the various layers of the planet behave to influence the environment at the surface and thousands of miles out into space.
   "There's tremendous heat energy stored down there," said geologist David Price, another co-author of the study.
   Besides warming the surface of the planet to some extent, "the heat flowing out of the core causes earthquakes, volcanoes and the drift of continents," Price said. "It also causes the turbulent, swirling motion of the liquid iron that creates Earth's magnetic field. But if you don't know the core temperature, you just can't understand how this all works."
   The researchers, led by geologist Dario Alfe, tried a new approach to calculating how temperatures affect iron under the tremendous pressure found nearly 2,000 miles beneath the Earth's surface. They used a Cray supercomputer to model the conditions at the center of the Earth.

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