Posted by Mike on July 20th, 2011 in earth science

A recent article in R&D magazine http://www.rdmag.com//News/2011/07/Materials-Geology-Radioac tivity-What-keeps-the-Earth-cooking/?et_cid=1829552&et_rid=54740611&li nkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.rdm  reported that the evidence is fairly conclusive that the center of the Earth is in fact being partially heated by the radiation of atomic decay. At minimum, Uranium 238, Thorium 232 and Potassium 40 are decaying and probably producing about half of the 44 terawatts of heat that flow from the earth into space. The rest is residual heat from the earth’s formation and something else that has not been identified, but my bet is on a full fledged fission reactor, though there is no real evidence of that… yet.

This is interesting confirmation for those who believed that without some sort of “self-generated” heat, the planet would have cooled long ago. The consequences of that cooling would have been pretty significant for us, one would guess. Among other things, without that heat, the liquid Iron/Nickel outer core would probably have solidified long ago, and while maybe the planet would be a bit more predictable - like without that heat maybe the mantle cools and with that cooling no more movement of the crust, no more continental drift, no more plate tectonics, no more earthquakes, tsunamis, etc… but we all would probably not be here.  Without movement of the Iron outer core, we probably lose the Magnetosphere, which, along with streaming charged particles from the solar wind from the sun, not only produces the Aurora’s both north and south which are fun to look at, but probably protects our lovely atmosphere from being blown away by that same solar wind. Case in point: Mars. Mars doesn’t seem to have an active core, nor does it have much of an atmosphere any more. If it walk like a duck, talks like a duck, well there you have it.

The thing that strikes me most from this is what this may do to our search for extraterrestrial life. If an atmosphere is required to sustain life, and a magnetosphere is required to protect an atmosphere, and the magnetosphere requires a self heating core to keep an iron magnet moving in the center of the planet, what do these requirements  do to our odds of finding “intelligent” life in the universe? I am beginning to think those saucer sighting really ARE weather balloons!