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How Much Fuel Is Inside Earth?


Claire.

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How Much Fuel Is Inside Earth?

The searing heat deep inside Earth is what keeps the planet churning — creeping tectonic plates, erupting volcanoes and a working magnetic field — but how much of this sizzling energy does the planet have in its tank?

Scientists have long wondered how much energy remains in the planet today, 4.6 billion years after the rocky world formed. Now, a team of researchers plans to have an answer to the gargantuan question by 2025. By determining how much energy Earth has left, scientists will better understand the building blocks of the planet and its energy-spending processes.

Read more: Live Science

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Well a thought stuck me the other day.  Boy did it hurt:D  I wondered what's happening to the size of the Earth's core every time a volcano erupts and then "reloads"  And isn't the Earth's core cooling ever so slightly over the eons?  As it cools, wouldn't the mass shrink?  Wouldn't the Earth shift it's mass through earthquakes trying to fill the void?  In doing so, wouldn't the Earth be shrinking as well?  Maybe the ocean levels aren't rising.  Maybe the Earth is shrinking!  I told you the thought hurt. 

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1 hour ago, paperdyer said:

Well a thought stuck me the other day.  Boy did it hurt:D  I wondered what's happening to the size of the Earth's core every time a volcano erupts and then "reloads"  And isn't the Earth's core cooling ever so slightly over the eons?  As it cools, wouldn't the mass shrink?  Wouldn't the Earth shift it's mass through earthquakes trying to fill the void?  In doing so, wouldn't the Earth be shrinking as well?  Maybe the ocean levels aren't rising.  Maybe the Earth is shrinking!  I told you the thought hurt. 

So volcanic activity typically involves lithospheric process - that is the crust and uppermost mantle, several hundred km at most. That's where you have your magma chambers, "plumbing" systems, etc. The core is almost 3000 km down. That's over an order of magnitude of distance further down than typical volcanic processes operate at. Of course, what about mantle plumes, I can hear you thinking. Those do probably arise from the D'' layer just above the core (thermal boundary layer between basal lower mantle and core. And they do rise quickly (relatively) and set off massive LIPs. Most likely.

The question of heat transfer out of the core is an interesting one, in an academic sense. It's fairly well established that the inner core is solid - solidifying since enough heat was lost to allow it. The outer core, of course, is liquid and generates the geomagnetic field. The solid inner core is proof, more or less, of heat loss from the core. This heat interacts with the D" (thermal boundary, remember) and diffuses or convects (plumes!) through it. The majority of heat lost from the core is thought to go as plumes of hot, low viscosity material from the deep mantle. Which in turn lead to surficial volcanism as they "blowtorch" the crust or simply by pressure release melting as the plume material passes the solidus.

There are no "voids" as such in the deep Earth (once you reach 10s of kilometers down). The pressure is simply too great. That is why the mantle "flows" (slowly). Think, again, of something that is typically fluid, such as syrup. If you have a pot of syrup and some rises from the bottom (if you heat it), there will be no "void" left at the bottom. Cooler material will simply flow to that location as the hot material leaves it.

The Earth isn't shrinking. The heat being lost is would imply rather small rates of contraction over the entire age of the Earth (billions of years). And would require a global compressional stress regime, which obviates the tensional stresses that see in rift valleys and mid-ocean ridges. Also, we'd be able to tease it out of paleomagnetic data. And radioactives decay means that we didn't start with a fixed budget as such (simply the heat of accretion and that's it). I mean, the budget was "fixed" to some degree, which these workers are trying to tease out, but it was a big pile of heat that never gets replenished.

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"We're in a field of guesses," said McDonough. "At this point in my career, I don't care if I'm right or wrong. I just want to know the answer."

So since his career is just about over he can finally put aside financial bias, tenure and funding bias & professional ego.  He will actually attack the problem with an open and curious scientific mind.  Isn't that what he was supposed to do from the start?

Wierd statement, its almost like a confession, like he is looking for absolution.

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Depends...is oil decayed dinosaurs (lol) and plant materials, or an abiotic byproduct of the Earths mantle?

There are many examples of "depleted" oil fields filling up with oil again...Is it possible oil is a recurring resource?- yep.

CFACT- Caruba... http://www.cfact.org/2012/09/19/is-oil-a-renewable-resource/

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