Talk:Earth's internal heat budget

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This article was the subject of an educational assignment in 2013 Q3. Further details were available on the "Education Program:Louisiana State University/GEOL 4066: Plate Tectonics (Fall 2013)" page, which is now unavailable on the wiki.

A fact from Earth's internal heat budget appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 November 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that 47 terrawatts of heat emerges from the interior of the Earth compared to 173,000 terrawatts received from the sun?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Earth's internal heat budget.

Wikipedia

conjecture[edit]

Much of this is presented as settled fact; whereas, "global" aspects of the earth's interior, structure, and age, are still under debate.Wikibearwithme (talk) 20:07, 17 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress[edit]

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Earth's circumference which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:03, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Primordial heat[edit]

I read an interesting article that describes the earth's sources of heat as 1) from gravity and the original formation of the earth, 2) gravitational heat from denser materials being pulled toward the center and less dense materials flowing toward the top, and the friction that arises from that, 3) latent heat, which is energy released by the boundary of the outer core solidifying and causing the inner core to slowly grow, and 4) radioactivity. Maybe we could give #1 #2 and #3 their own sub-headings, or maybe we can adjust the "Primordial heat" section to differentiate these types more specifically. I drafted some changes but didn't feel comfortable submitting them, I think this edit should be done by somebody that knows more about geology. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:27, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A corollary request, for someone with a better understanding of geothermodynamics:

One often reads that latent heat of solidification (#3 above), mainly from crystallization of the nickel-iron outer core, but perhaps also of mantle materials, is a major contributor to internal heat supply. But with both crystallization and thermal contraction absent a phase change, the whole earth becomes smaller and denser. Even a tiny overall shrinkage represents a large release of gravitational potential energy, perhaps much larger than the evolution of latent heat. I have not easily found references on this - can someone comment on the topic? Cteno (talk) 22:33, 7 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Potential energy is missing[edit]

As correctly mentioned above the crystallization of 80.000 tons of iron each second should contribute a significant amount of heat, which is not taken into the equations in the article. It might very well be that in the total budget this is only a very small percentage, but at least that should be explained. @Cteno: the volume of the core wil be reduced by this, but I can not see the earth shrinking because of this. It will somewhat reduce the pressure, which will allow other material (probably the lower mantle) to decompress and so the total volume will surely not be changed. It would be a nice excersize to calculate the total loss of volume so far and the end result when the entire core has solidified. Codiv (talk) 11:38, 27 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]