(Disclaimer, the following post is from personal knowledge, not from a scientific report)

It doesn’t add up, the Earth’s energy balance doesn’t balance, and if it wasn’t for the Japanese tsunami in 2011 we wouldn’t know it.

Let’s go back to the 1890s. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), calculated the age of Earth by using thermal gradients, and arrived at a maximum age of 100 million years old and a probable age of 20 million years. The error was because the calculation was based on the assumption that the Earth’s heat flux was due to gravity at the time of the Earth’s formation, bringing the Earth’s components together releasing energy as heat which slowly leaks out to the surface.

Mollwollfumble’s corollary is that the proportion of the Earth’s heat flux due to the gravitational energy of it’s formation cannot exceed 100 million years over 4.54 billion years = 2.2%, and is probably closer to a fifth of that, 0.44%.

Shift forward in time to Friday 11 March 2011. The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. The Fukushima nuclear power plant went into meltdown. Following that, all Japan’s nuclear power plants were shut down for a while, which gave Japanese physicists a chance to try something that could never have been tried before.

Nuclear power plants produce neutrinos, and the Kamiokande 2 (K2) was measuring these looking for neutrino oscillations. With Japan’s nuclear power plants were in action, K2 had the opportunity to do something that had never been done before, to look for the very faint signature of neutrinos generated by radioactivity in the Earth’s core. They succeeded, and calculated from that that the amount of energy generated by the Earth’s natural radioactivity is 44 Terawatts.

Therein lies the problem. That 44 Terawatts is only about half the energy needed to power the Earth’s heat flux flowing out of the interior detected at the surface. As explained above, gravitational energy left over from the Earth’s formation is nowhere near powerful enough to explain the difference. Small amounts of energy come from the latent heat of phase change as the liquid outer core solidifies onto the solid inner core, and from the chemical reaction of iron with sulphur deep within the earth to produce iron sulphide. But I, personally, don’t think they’re nearly enough to account for the difference.

In summary, the Earth’s energy balance doesn’t balance.

Comments?

mollwollfumble said:

(Disclaimer, the following post is from personal knowledge, not from a scientific report)

It doesn’t add up, the Earth’s energy balance doesn’t balance, and if it wasn’t for the Japanese tsunami in 2011 we wouldn’t know it.

Let’s go back to the 1890s. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), calculated the age of Earth by using thermal gradients, and arrived at a maximum age of 100 million years old and a probable age of 20 million years. The error was because the calculation was based on the assumption that the Earth’s heat flux was due to gravity at the time of the Earth’s formation, bringing the Earth’s components together releasing energy as heat which slowly leaks out to the surface.

Mollwollfumble’s corollary is that the proportion of the Earth’s heat flux due to the gravitational energy of it’s formation cannot exceed 100 million years over 4.54 billion years = 2.2%, and is probably closer to a fifth of that, 0.44%.

Shift forward in time to Friday 11 March 2011. The Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. The Fukushima nuclear power plant went into meltdown. Following that, all Japan’s nuclear power plants were shut down for a while, which gave Japanese physicists a chance to try something that could never have been tried before.

Nuclear power plants produce neutrinos, and the Kamiokande 2 (K2) was measuring these looking for neutrino oscillations. With Japan’s nuclear power plants were in action, K2 had the opportunity to do something that had never been done before, to look for the very faint signature of neutrinos generated by radioactivity in the Earth’s core. They succeeded, and calculated from that that the amount of energy generated by the Earth’s natural radioactivity is 44 Terawatts.

Therein lies the problem. That 44 Terawatts is only about half the energy needed to power the Earth’s heat flux flowing out of the interior detected at the surface. As explained above, gravitational energy left over from the Earth’s formation is nowhere near powerful enough to explain the difference. Small amounts of energy come from the latent heat of phase change as the liquid outer core solidifies onto the solid inner core, and from the chemical reaction of iron with sulphur deep within the earth to produce iron sulphide. But I, personally, don’t think they’re nearly enough to account for the difference.

In summary, the Earth’s energy balance doesn’t balance.

Comments?

> With Japan’s nuclear power plants were in action …

With Japan’s nuclear power plants out of action …

>and calculated from that that the amount of energy generated by the Earth’s natural radioactivity is 44 Terawatts

how can you be sure that’s near accurate?

dumb Q, as I depart, what of the total deformational forces (related gravity) caused by the rotating earth etc.

So what is a terror watt then?

Comments:

1. I don’t get why this could only be done when the Jap nukes were OOA. There are some countries that don’t have nukes anyway, so why not do the measurements there?

2. What about heat generated by tidal action?

I’d need to see the journal articles to find the source of the error, but it is sufficient to say that

A) measurements were made of the geoneutrino flux nearly a decade before Fukushima, including some in places without nuclear reactors.

B) The estimates of radioactive decay power in the erth vary over a huge range depending on what other assunptions are used in the modelling. No one would fall off their chair if the actual value is 15 TW or 40 TW. There is no consensus on the ratio of geothermal to primordial component.

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

I would recon more like ten trillonth

bob(from black rock) said:

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

I would recon more like ten trillonth

Well that’s good but I already calculated it.

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

Solar radiation per second?

dv said:

bob(from black rock) said:

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

I would recon more like ten trillonth

Well that’s good but I already calculated it.

He’s even had someone do an independent check and get the same answer.

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

Is that from all sources, or just electricity?

The Rev Dodgson said:

dv said:

bob(from black rock) said:

I would recon more like ten trillonth

Well that’s good but I already calculated it.

He’s even had someone do an independent check and get the same answer.

Interestingly, even if we take Bob’s number as being an estimate of the total energy emitted by the Sun, divided by total Human energy use it is still about 40,000 times too big.

Witty Rejoinder said:

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

Solar radiation per second?

There’s no need to specify a time unit for this purpose.

Michael V said:

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

Is that from all sources, or just electricity?

That’s all sources of power use: electrical, vehicular, direct industrial etc.

dv said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

Solar radiation per second?

There’s no need to specify a time unit for this purpose.

I’m surprised that solar radiation is only 10,000 times geothermal output. I would have guessed much higher.

dv said:

Michael V said:

dv said:

On a side note, it is interesting to consider that the power that human civilisation uses is equivalent to about a third of the power being pumped out a hot radioactive planet…

OTOH it is only about a ten thousandth of the power of the solar radiation upon the earth.

Is that from all sources, or just electricity?

That’s all sources of power use: electrical, vehicular, direct industrial etc.

I bet that doesn’t include the solar power used to dry salt – runs away.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

Michael V said:

Is that from all sources, or just electricity?

That’s all sources of power use: electrical, vehicular, direct industrial etc.

I bet that doesn’t include the solar power used to dry salt – runs away.

Or the solar power used to grow the food we eat.

> 2. What about heat generated by tidal action?

That’s a point.

dv said:

I’d need to see the journal articles to find the source of the error, but it is sufficient to say that

A) measurements were made of the geoneutrino flux nearly a decade before Fukushima, including some in places without nuclear reactors.

B) The estimates of radioactive decay power in the erth vary over a huge range depending on what other assunptions are used in the modelling. No one would fall off their chair if the actual value is 15 TW or 40 TW. There is no consensus on the ratio of geothermal to primordial component.

Thanks dv.

They divided by two when they shouldn’t have