While climate change discussion has focused much on what is happening on Earth’s surface, scientists are attempting to decipher why the planet’s core may be losing its heat faster than previously understood.
It’s been known for a long time that the Earth has transitioned over millions of years from a red hot surface to a hospitable planet. In the process, it has been cooling all along.
But there are several mysteries regarding the cooling of the planet. For example how quickly the Earth might cool down in the future or what exactly will be factors at play.
In recent research, a group of scientists has attempted to come up with a model that may explain how the Earth might be cooling down. Researchers are focusing on reading the thermal conductivity of the minerals located in the layer between the Earth’s inner core and its mantle.
According to the Swiss federal institute of technology ETH Zurich, ETH Professor Motohiko Murakami and his colleagues from Carnegie Institution for Science have built a system to measure the thermal conductivity in the laboratory under the same temperature and conditions as found inside the Earth.
“This measurement system let us show that the thermal conductivity of bridgmanite is about 1.5 times higher than assumed,” Murakami says, according to ETH Zurich.
Their finding means the flow of heat from the core into the mantle is higher than previously thought, a report on the website says. This, in turn, means the cooling of the planet might be accelerating.
The research is important in that it will help provide insight into the changes with regard to dynamics at play in the evolution of the planet.
“Our results could give us a new perspective on the evolution of the Earth’s dynamics. They suggest that Earth, like the other rocky planets Mercury and Mars, is cooling and becoming inactive much faster than expected,” Murakami says.
