4 ms·

Just a curious question, is Earth's core cooling off like Mars?

• bmitc 2y ago
  I sure hope not. I would assume it's a rather dynamic situation of various periods of different relative behavior. We're certainly at its mercy though. My understanding about Mars is that it is just a much smaller planet than Earth, and it's core composition was slightly different (?), and so the core couldn't keep up and just slowly stopped "slushing around" and cooled off. That's my very loose understanding of the situation without digging into references. A quick search also seems to imply that it was the collision of Earth and another planetoid (not sure of the right name), the collision that created our rather relatively large and close Moon, injected a huge amount of heat and energy in Earth, basically re-smelting it. Plus the Moon constantly tugs and pulls on the Earth, which also probably adds to the core dynamics.
  • nonethewiser 2y ago
    So many fortunate series of events that lead to the opportunity for life. Some survivorship bias I guess.
• nonameiguess 2y ago
  Yes, it is. There was a pop-sci book that came out twenty years ago, The Life and Death of Planet Earth, which contains some speculation about the consequences of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Death_of_Planet_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_and_Death_of_Planet_E.... They give a low-end estimate of 500-800 million years before plate tectonics stop. Net effect would be the planet becomes uninhabitable by modern day plants and animals well before the sun goes red giant and kills off everything else.