: The earth’s inner core is 9,800° F, almost as hot as the sun. Why is the core solid? Shouldn’t the iron and nickel liquify?

Question

I also read that it may be somewhere between solid and liquid in a “superionic” state. But I don’t really understand what they mean. Is there an animated video of this hypothesis?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

The short answer is “pressure”, and the long answer is “there’s literally nowhere for the freedom of flow that characterizes fluids to manifest”. You have all of these hot atoms, and hot atoms really, really want to get moving and do dynamic things, but you’re squeezing them so hard that they can’t move, despite their best efforts. And when atoms can’t really flow past each other, we call that a solid.