Today I read a story in the WP relating to the rotation of earths “solid” inner iron core. I looked it up from a different source that confirmed it is solid as opposed to liquid. How can it be so hot and not be molten? Thank you!
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It is because the pressure keeps it from actually melting. The materia estate of a substance depends, mainly, of its temperature and its pressure (as inverse of volume). It would depend of other things like density but we could keep this aside for metals and for simplicity.
The high temperature would force molecules or atoms to vibrate more and push neighbours aside, that would break the bonds between neighbours making it easy to flow, thus becoming liquid.
The thing is that the metal core is surrounded by the other layers of molten metal, crust, water and atmosphere. All this mass surrounding the core leads to a pressure in all directions that overcomes the natural tendency of a hot metal under a lower pressure (1 atmosphere, like at sea level). This means that the molecules and atoms will keep acting as a solid metal cause they have not room to expand and flow.
If you were able to instantly drill a hole down to rhe core it would flow upwards and spill around like… a volcano.
I hope this helps.
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