Is Earth a naturally occurring perpetual energy generator Veeky Forums?
My understanding is that the pressure of roughly six sextillion tons of rock and metal being compressed into a spheroid by gravity generates immense amounts of heat. Heat which can be harnessed by Humans which is utilized to boil water, which creates steam, which turns turbines.
With that said, can this source of power be exhausted?
Are there any other factors that majorly contribute to, or are vital to the existence of our planet's geothermal activity?
The molten core will eventually cool. It will just take an extremely long time.
Joseph Wilson
>Is Earth a naturally occurring perpetual energy generator Veeky Forums? no Is Earth a naturally occurring energy generator Veeky Forums? yes
Charles Hill
The heat has already been generated(during earth's creation), now it can only cool down.
Caleb Fisher
Will it cool completely, or will it fall to a point but remain above a certain threshold?
Juan King
Look at Mars.
Also, there is a theory that the heat in the core has been sustained by a nuclear reaction. Still, that will come to an end at some point.
Cameron Jackson
see Heat is constantly regenerated by pressure and radioactivity, it would only stop after billions of years, if we humans remain here and intact
Ethan Johnson
>can this source of power be exhausted? you could power the rest of humanities electricity needs off the heat from the core until the sun went super nova and never put a meaningful dent in the temperature.
Aiden Walker
> Heat is constantly regenerated by pressure and radioactivity, it would only stop after billions of years
Why would the heat stop regenerating? As long as the pressure is still a factor would the rate of heat generation not simply be diminished?
Thomas Edwards
>Why would the heat stop regenerating? As long as the pressure is still a factor would the rate of heat generation not simply be diminished?
it doesn't matter if it regenerates or not because even if we power everything off the heat of the planet until the sun goes super-nova we will have taken such a small part of that heat energy that it wouldn't even make a difference. There is an unfathomable amount of energy in the form of heat in the planet just sitting there a few miles below ground surface everywhere on earth. Its completely retarded that we aren't using it to power civilization.
Julian Rodriguez
I'm with you buddy. Seems like a no brainer...
But surely there has to be a better reason, beyond incompetence and/or lethargy, as to why it has not been more widely exploited...
Chase Ortiz
Entropy is a bitch.
Asher Evans
there is no such thing perpetual energy is an impossibility any energy source can be exhausted
Jaxon Cook
Oil companies. Racketeering. Regulations.
Caleb Martinez
Yeah I figured. Energy can't be created or destroyed, only transformed and all that...
Although, in this instance: where you have heat being generated by gravity acting upon a enormous mass stone . What is being exhausted?
Nathan Campbell
>perpetual energy No, there is no such thing. However it is incredibly efficient. Due to the massive pressures involved, the earth does generate heat, and it probably won't cool down completely until after our sun is a red dwarf. The most important thing our core provides is the magnetic field which protects our planet from radiation, and atmospheric ablation. The energy isn't "free" but it is abundant and we will be able to harness it until we go extinct from destroying our biosphere or nuking ourselves.
Gabriel Phillips
>heat being generated by gravity acting upon a enormous mass stone
whoever told you that gravity makes things get hot was lying to you. Friction can make things get hot. And gravity can cause friction. Some of Jupiter's moons, for example, are squeezed and churned by its gravity and that heats them. But generally speaking the mass of a planet squeezing it self doesn't make it any hotter. Or if it initially makes it hotter then it doesn't keep heating it over time, eventually that heat is lost.
but its irrelevant if the heat "recharges" because there is so much of it that you could run all of civilization off it until the sun goes supernova and not make a meaningful dent in the temperature of the core. There is that much heat there.
Caleb Robinson
> whoever told you that gravity makes things get hot was lying to you. Friction can make things get hot. And gravity can cause friction.
Yeah. That's what I was trying to articulate when I said: "gravity acting upon-"...
> But generally speaking the mass of a planet squeezing it self doesn't make it any hotter. Or if it initially makes it hotter then it doesn't keep heating it over time, eventually that heat is lost.
I see. Thanks for the explanation...
Jason Ramirez
(This is my first visit to Veeky Forums. It's basically /pol/ with pseudo-intellectuals.) 1. The Earth was formed as a molten ball, and has been slowly cooling ever since. We know that the CRUST is about 4.4 billions years old from radio-nucleotide dating of rocks. Once the crust formed it acted like a blanket for the heat below. 2. The angular momentum of the Earth and the Earth/Moon system have energy that is slowly being drained away as heat. Every year the Moon gets 1 centimeter farther away, and every million years the day gets a few seconds longer. 3. (Heavy) radioactive elements have collected in the core and are acting like a low level nuclear pile producing some heat. Eventually they will all decay to stable elements. Most of them are already gone after 4.4+ billions years. 4. None of this matters because for the next million years it will basically be exactly like it is now. --- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient
If geothermal energy were cost effective they would already be doing it. It all comes down to the cost of drilling a very deep hole compared to the energy payoff. Except in places where there are magma plumes close to the surface (like Yellowstone or Iceland) it would be cheaper to build a hydroelectric dam, solar panels, windmills, or a nuclear reactor (maybe not, after long term waste storage costs). A coal / natural gas plant is cheaper than ALL these things (for now).
Juan Allen
It would likely cool completely.
However, the time scales we are dealing with are too long, so it is possible that the earth might not be around long enough to cool completely. But if it does survive that long, it will cool completely. Infact, a theory exists that asserts the entire universe will cool completely, but this is on a time scale much longer than the earth cooling, so we can be more confident in the earth cooling.
Daniel Mitchell
What is there not to understand? Earth is just a slowly cooling ball of lava. Heat exchange with space is mostly done by infrared radiation. But now, the crust has solidified, and barely emits any more than what the sun gives it.
Anthony Miller
>What is being exhausted essentially, the space between the earth's constituent particles. the earth's matter has a latent heat energy from the days of the solar system's formation. heat energy is the chaotic momentum of the particles bouncing off eachother. Gravity/pressure is squeezing the particles slowly closer and closer together, reducing the range they can bounce around. what is being exhausted is that latent heat: after a few billions of years (or however absurdly long time), the particles will be squashed together to a minimum point and there will be no more available "extractable" energy.
