Hacker News Reader

Comment by itishappy | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but minimal.

The heat is coming out one way or another. It already traveled 6500 km to the surface unaided, we're just helping it up the last 1 km or so. Frankly, I'd be interested if the core would notice an effect from the removal of the Earth's crust in it's entirety. My money is on "no for any human-relavant-timescale."

For reference, the interior of the Earth works out to about 50 TW of heat. Today, humans consume about 20 TW. The Sun delivers 173000 TW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget

View on HN

In part with heavy rains, Puna geothermal fracking on Hawaii Island appears likely to be responsible for 2018 eruption.

So no, not 'minimal'.

I had no idea about the Puna geothermal plant! I'll read up on it!

My "minimal" remark was intended as a response to the question of our effect on the Earth's core; I should have made that more clear. I'm sure we'll uncover all manner of consequences to the upper crust.

Having read into your comment a bit, the USGS doesn't agree with you. :(

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2020/1017/ofr20201017.pdf

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14259/did-t...

Interesting, thanks! I did not know the eath's core is still generating heat.

Emitting heat technically. Imagine rocks warmed by a fire or those in a sauna, they cool off very, very slowly. At earths core is a giant chunk of super compressed and super heated lead. I don't recall if the core is the size of the moon, but you could imagine a solid ball of lead for your sauna that is the size of the moon and so hot it would melt if it were not under extreme pressure.

Iron and nickel mostly, not lead, AFAIK

My mistake, good correction

There's a nearly-negligible amount of heat being created from simple radioactive decay, but essentially all of the heat is just leftover from the formation of the planet.

Which is just nuts to think about. The core is that hot and it has been for billions of years. Incredible.

The linked wiki article says around 50% of geothermal heat is from radioactive decay

Reply on news.ycombinator.com