GunnerJ

I'd like to see you point out just where Friar said that the energy from pressure "just vanishes." Those cool shades look more and more ridiculous with each post you make.

Corwin

Fine rim.... then possibly you could answer something... given that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed.... and the pressure at the center of the earth, as a result of gravity, is several million tons per square meter.... possibly you could explain where all that energy GOES?

tronvillain

What energy?

Corwin

Ok tron....

Go out and drop a freakin cinder block on your foot and ask me what energy.

Coragyps

Quote:
I remember reading that Niels Bohr used this to show the earth had to be at least 250,000 years old. Later when radioactive decay was taken into consideration they upped it to 4 million. The second law was used to refute a young earth. /

I think that was Lord Kelvin. Some young whippersnapper like Rutherford had to be very diplomatic at an 1890's meeting of the Royal Society or suchlike to point out that the Grand Old Man had done his calculations just right, but had no way to know about this newfangled heat source from atoms.

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: Coragyps ]</p>

Coragyps

Corwin: Maybe a semantics problem? The pressure doesn't make heat: it's the motion (macro- and molecular scale) that does. Pressurization will heat things - pressure alone won't.

Friar Bellows

Take out radioactivity. The Earth will cool. Period. Corwin's "pressure" will not be able to stop it. Pressure change can cause a temperature rise. Volume change, too. Motion. And pressure can keep the core solid. But it's not the reason for the Earth's interior staying hot.

Corwin

Actually both of them contribute. (Where have I ever said radiation had nothing to do with it?) But for temperatures to be that high purely from radioactive decay, we'd all be glowing.

Fact: You have several million pounds per square meter of raw force pressing against an object which can't move. This is called 'energy that has noplace to go.' So what happens to it? Ah... it dissipates into its environment, like all energy will eventually. And how does it do this? Since energy can't be destroyed, it must change form from a type of energy that can't continue to move (kinetic force) to a type of energy that CAN move (heat.) Light does the same thing. (Of course things don't get warmer when you shine a light on them... and it's not from the higher frequency light converting to lower frequency infra-red heat.)

But of course, I'm totally wrong. It's all radiation. Never mind that we'd all have 30 legs and glow if the levels were that high, and never mind the lack of any ability to explain where all that kinetic force is actually going. (It IS a change in 'pressure.' It's effectively slowing from 9.8 m/s^2 to 0. Multiply that out by how many billions of kilograms we're talking about.)

tronvillain

Corwin:
That would be a matter of gravitational potential energy being converted to kinetic energy, and is totally unrelated to my question.

tronvillain

Corwin
Yes, you do. No, it's not.

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>