If it’s hot in the center of the earth, Then why is it cold in the bottom of the sea?

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If it’s hot in the center of the earth, Then why is it cold in the bottom of the sea?

In: Earth Science

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Earth’s surface isn’t warmed by it’s hot core, but by the sun.

The bottom of the ocean is still to far from the core to be heated by that and too protected from the sun to be warmed by that either.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Earths core gains it’s heat from nuclear fission. There is also some frictional heat generation and heat left over from formation of the planet. But main point is that core is keeping itself hot.

Sea on the other hand don’t have internal heat source. It get’s it heat from either the sun or the planet core (underwater volcano). Now thanks to fact that hot water rises and loses heat in the surface and cold water falls down means that this current will always keep cold water down.

Third thing that makes sea bottom cold is fact that water is heaviest when it’s around 4 degree Celsius (or 40 Fahrenheit). This means that really cold water or ice will float preventing the bottom of the sea from freezing.

To recap. Three factors keep bottom of sea cold. They are lack of internal heat source, convection current and fact that coldest water is still liqued.

Anonymous 0 Comments

>If it’s hot in the center of the earth, Then why is it cold in the bottom of the sea?

The bottom of the sea is – on a planetary scale – not much deeper than the highest mountain peak. It’s still just part of the very outermost crust. All the Earth’s residual formation heat and the ongoing generation from nuclear decay is happening much farther “down” at much higher pressures.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The center of the Earth is 6371 km away from the Earth’s surface. The ocean is less than 4km deep on average. This 4km makes a very, very small difference. On the other hand, the bottom of the ocean doesn’t get any heat from the sun and is only heated by convection of heat from the surface of the water.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The deepest part of the ocean isn’t even 10 miles deep. The earth is several thousand miles in diameter. The bottom of the ocean isn’t significantly closer to the core than the surface but plenty deep enough to block all sunlight. Also cold water sinks to the bottom.