Subject:
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Re: Melting a planet's core
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 10 Jun 2003 16:06:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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255 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Steven Lane wrote:
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I saw a program the other day which said that the planet Mars lost most of
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it’s atmosphere when it lost it’s magnetic field. It said that the field
deflected harmful solar winds preventing them scouring away the atmosphere,
but it lost it’s field when the planets core stopped rotating, this being the
result of the core cooling down and solidifying.
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That sounds a lot like the premise of the recent movie The Core, but I saw a
geophysicist on TV talking about it, and how he liked the fact that recent
movies have been inspiring kids to get into science, but he said that in this
case he wished they’d gotten their facts straight. According to what he said,
it’s the magnetic field that keeps the core rotating, not the other way around.
Granted, you aren’t making anything happen in there if it’s solid rock all the
way through, and I don’t know exactly what makes the core maintain its liquid
state (besides intense heat and pressure), so I’m not sure how easy it would be
to reliquify Mars’ core (aside from that bit about sun-roasting it). The best I
can think of would be to drill down really deep into the core from all over the
planet, and drop every possible nuclear warhead that the entire world is capable
of producing into those holes. You probably wouldn’t want to set them off all
at the same time (or the moment of detonation might cause enough stress to
actually crack the planet), but if you pack the holes full of the drill waste
(just enough to keep the explosion from venting most of the force out the
holes), you might be able to generate enough heat to get a good chunk of the
core liquid again. Of course, if we could develop practical fusion generators
that could be lowered down into the holes and produce a steady stream of heat
and energy rather than popping off giant firecrackers, that would probably be
more effective and a lot safer.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Melting a planet's core
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| (...) Entering extrreme geek zone OK let's do the math every thing is metric radius of the earth = 6378137 meters figure the "core" is 1/4 radius out 1594534.25 volume of core 4/3 * PI * R-cubed = 16982051976875485000 = 1.7e10^19 M^3 Ignoring (...) (21 years ago, 10-Jun-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Melting a planet's core
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| I saw a program the other day which said that the planet Mars lost most of it's atmosphere when it lost it's magnetic field. It said that the field deflected harmful solar winds preventing them scouring away the atmosphere, but it lost it's field (...) (21 years ago, 10-Jun-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.space)
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