bluefugue

When I saw the trailer, I thought it might be some sort of remake of "Journey to the Center of the Earth." But I guess it's not, or at least it's so much changed as to be unrecognizable...

Jamie_L

It is my understanding that some portion of the Earth's core is liquid iron, and that it is the motion of this liquid that gives the earth its magnitic field.

Without a magnetic field, life on earth (our kind of life, anyway) would be impossible. The magnetic field protects earth from solar winds that would otherwise strip the planet of it's atmosphere and bombard us with all manner of unpleasant radiation.

Beyond that, however, everything else about "The Core" looked like complete and utter B.S.

And yes, it did remind me of Armageddon. Which is probably my least favorite movie of all time.

Jamie

Mageth

There's a solid inner core and liquid outer core. It is the motion of the liquid outer core that generates the earth's magnetic field.

Here's an interesting article:
<a href="http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/7_20_96/fob1.htm" target="_blank">Putting a New Spin on Earth's Core</a>

"By eavesdropping on earthquake vibrations passing through the globe's innards, seismologists have discovered that Earth's solid core is a solo dancer, spinning separately from the rest of the planet.

"Earth's metallic core consists of a solid iron sphere, about three-quarters of the size of the moon, sitting within an outer shell of roiling liquid iron."

(Actually, I think it's speculated to be about 4% nickel with maybe some oxygen, sulpher and/or silicon mixed in as well.)

"Xiaodong Song and Paul G. Richards of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., have found that the inner core rotates in the same direction as the rest of the planet but about 1 degree per year faster. They report their observation in the July 18 [1996] Nature."

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As far as geothermal energy, here's an interesting article in which a<a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,48947,00.html" target="_blank">radical new method</a> for tapping geothermal energy is proposed.

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Mageth

<a href="http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/05252000/grapha.htm" target="_blank">Here's</a> some more research supporting Song and Richards' findings.

Mageth

<a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1996/08.15/PuttingaNewSpin.html" target="_blank">This</a> page further describes the physics of the inner core rotation and its relationship to the magnetic field. It also describes independent verification that the earth's core is indeed "spinning."

Shadowy Man

It is exactly this kind of misinformation that leads to a movie like The Core being created.

The Earth's magnetic field has been variable for a long, long time. In fact, it reverses polarity about every million years. It is thought that during the reversal, the dipolar component of the Earth's magnetic field could actually go to zero.

Life on this planet has managed to survive through all that.

thebeave

IIRC from 20+ years ago, scientists had been unable to come up with a theory as to why the polarity of the earth's magnetic field reverses polarity every so often. Is that mystery solved yet?

thebeave

Detonating a nuke in the core is supposed to have some kind of impact to the earth? Are they serious? That's like expecting to knock over the Empire State building with a mouse fart!

Vorkosigan

Old idea. See E. Hamilton's City at World's End, from the 1950s, where a superhydrogen bomb blows a whole town from the midwest into the future where the earth is a dead, cold world, and alien rebels detonate a nuke inside the earth's core to regenerate it. Huge thermal shafts tap the core's heat directly. First SF book I ever read, and still a sentimental favorite.

Vorkosigan

beausoleil

In the long term. without a magnetic field, the Earth's atmosphere would sputter away. This is what has happened to the martian atmosphere since the martian core solidified and ceased producing a magnetic field.

Occasional zeros of the dipole field during reversals aren't really relevant to the effects of a long term absence of the magnetic field.