Subject: [SciPol 460] Mission to Sun shows turbulent magnetic field/Earth's Inner Temperature Taken: It's Hot!

From: "MsRedSonya" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 04:34:49 -0000

Scientific American, (21 Mar 2007)
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=mission-to-sun-shows-turb&chanID=sa007&modsrc=reuters

" X-ray images taken from a new international spacecraft show that the
Sun's magnetic field is much more turbulent than scientists knew, NASA
reported on Wednesday."..."A turbulent magnetic field would, in
theory, generate more energy than a steady-state field.
"...""Everything we thought we knew about X-ray images of the sun is
out of date.""...""Hinode images are revealing irrefutable evidence
for the presence of turbulence-driven processes that are bringing
magnetic fields, on all scales, to the sun's surface, resulting in an
extremely dynamic chromosphere or gaseous envelope around the sun,"
said Alan Title, a physicist at Lockheed Martin Corp. and Stanford
University in California."

Earth's Inner Temperature Taken: It's Hot!
Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience.com, (30 Mar 2007)
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/070330_earth_temperature.html

"Scientists have taken the temperature of Earth's innards, more than a
thousand miles beneath the surface, and found that the mercury there
soars to about 6,650 degrees Fahrenheit. That's nearly as steamy as
our sun, where the surface reaches 9,980 degrees. "..."Robert van der
Hilst of MIT and his colleagues examined an area beneath Central
America by monitoring earthquake-generated seismic waves in real
time."..." The scientists' calculations put this temperature at about
6,650 degrees. Scientists estimate Earth's inner core to be about
9,000 degrees. "..."Combined with a past study that estimated heat
loss in an area beneath the Pacific Ocean, the research team suggests
Earth's total heat loss at the core-mantle boundary is about 7.5 to 15
terawatts, much higher than previous estimates. Global energy use by
humans is about 13 terawatts. From their measurements, the scientists
estimate that about one-third of the heat that radiates from Earth's
surface into the atmosphere-estimated to be 42 terawatts-comes from
our planet's core. "...""The heat flow that we measure is larger than
what is needed to drive the geo-dynamo, so there is actually more
energy down there than people thought," van der Hilst told
LiveScience. "

Seismostratigraphy and Thermal Structure of Earth's Core-Mantle
Boundary Region
R D Van Der Hilst et al.
Science 315 (5820), 1813-7 (30 Mar 2007)
 info:doi/10.1126/science.1137867
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5820/1813?etoc

"We used three-dimensional inverse scattering of core-reflected shear
waves for large-scale, high-resolution exploration of Earth's deep
interior (D'') and detected multiple, piecewise continuous interfaces
in the lowermost layer (D'') beneath Central and North America. With
thermodynamic properties of phase transitions in mantle silicates, we
interpret the images and estimate in situ temperatures."..."The core-
mantle boundary temperature is estimated at 3950 ± 200 kelvin. Beneath
Central America, a site of deep subduction, the D'' is relatively cold
(T = 700 ± 100 kelvin). Accounting for a factor-of-two uncertainty in
thermal conductivity, core heat flux is 80 to 160 milliwatts per
square meter (mW m-2) into the coldest D'' region and 35 to 70 mW m-2
away from it. Combined with estimates from the central Pacific, this
suggests a global average of 50 to 100 mW m-2 and a total heat loss of
7.5 to 15 terawatts. "

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