The suns energy is from fusion, fine makes sense.
But the core is a hot spinning liquid metal generating tremendous amounts of heat. Why hasn’t it cooled down? How is it replenishing its energy?
In: Planetary Science
It’s hot for several reasons. It’s kept hot because the surface of the Earth is a very good insulator.
1 – The latent heat from the formation of the earth. It was VERY hot at the formation and is slowly cooling.
2 – Radioactive decay of uranium and other long lived radioactive elements contributes a significant amount of heat.
3 – Gravity. As heavier elements sink into the core, the potential energy they had is converted to heat.
4 – Heat of crystallization. As elements crystallize, heat is released. Under high pressure, some things such as carbon will crystalize.
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