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Confirmation That Earth's Core Is Solid
- olivermarks 8y ago'our latest understanding is', not 'confirmation'
- Retra 8y agoWhen your latest understanding is based on new evidence consistent with and supportive of your previous understanding, then it is a confirmation. It really isn't necessary to blindly hedge on what we know unless you're willing to call into question the concept of knowledge itself.
- greglindahl 8y agoThis 'confirmation' sure doesn't sound like a five-sigma detection of a new particle at CERN.
- ArchTypical 8y agoConfirmation and truth are not the same here. Confirmation is evidence paralleling expectation.
- caconym_ 8y agoI won't believe it until we send someone down there The Core-style to poke it with a stick and record a video of the proceedings on their cell phone.
- justinlilly 8y ago"correlogram"? More like "core-relogram", amirite?
- cbkeller 8y agoI'm a geologist. This press release is pure BS. We've known beyond reasonable doubt that the inner core is solid for more than a decade - for instance: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2005/04/14/science.1109134 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2005/04/14/scien... We even know the elastic modulus of the solid inner core: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaar2538 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaar2538
- fouc 8y agoAs a geologist, your favorite movie is still "The Core" right?
- cbkeller 8y agoYa, it's a perennial at "bad geoscience movie night"
- cbkeller 8y agoThe new study by Tkalčić and Phạm is cool work, but it's not even the first observation of PKJKP, so this press coverage is irresponsible. The "perspective" by Irving accompanying the Tkalčić and Phạm paper is pretty readable and BS-free: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/294 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6412/294
- wrycoder 8y agoThanks. As a general rule, sciencealert isn't worth reading.
- cbkeller 8y agoThere's a whole interesting dynamic that leads to this sort of press release: whenever someone publishes a high-profile Nature or Science paper, they usually have a chance to work with the university communications department to make a press release which goes to out sites like sciencealert. The writer from the communications department usually wants to hype your paper beyond belief, so it falls to you to talk them down (sometimes repeatedly). But if you talk it down too much, then maybe they won't want to do a press release for your next paper, so less press coverage to cite in your tenure case :/ It's a vicious cycle
- marktangotango 8y agoSo why is the earth so old and still incredibly geologically active? Is it simply because of the moon and tidal effects? If the crust is thin relative to other planets why hasn’t the earth cooled more by now?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- vectorEQ 8y agothere is actually no observable proof that anything about the inner inner earth we 'know' is correct. for lack of a better theory and any kind of observations, like with any science, we accept the most likely theory untill it's proven wrong >.> which it might or might not be in the future. to say you know exactly how the core of the earth looks like is just plain silly. it's like saying the universe is infinite or finite. there is no proof or fact. just theory upon theory upon theory. not saying it's bad to theorize, but confirmation? that would be a sample from earths core...... not some wild speculation base on observations of processes very far from what is being theorized about