Friday, March 20, 2009
Can probes actually ride to the Earth's core in a mass of molten iron?
This particular idea came from geophysicist David J. Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Imagine this, we can blast a crack in the Earth's crust, pour in a few thousand tons of rock-busting molten iron, and then toss in a grapefruit-size instrument designed to ride the plunging elevator of liquid metal to the planet's core. He contends that such a mission to explore the Earth's interior is technically feasible.
People have drilled into our planet's crust to investigate conditions there, but even the deepest borehole penentrates only about 9 miles. Stevenson also mentions that Seismic analyses suggest that the continents, the thickest portions of Earths's outer layer, are between 200 and 250 km thick. Below that hardened crust lies the viscous mantle, which surronds a liquid outer core and a solid inner core that are both made predominantly of iron.
Stevenson's plan would be to exploit that property. If scientists pour molten iron into a narrow crack at least 300 meters deep, the pressure at the bottom of the fissure would be enough to fracture the rock there. As the crack grows deeper, the molten iron would flow downward and maintain pressure at the crack tip. The crack will seal after the iron passed by and the probe would travel about sixteen inches per second to the Earth's outer core and the probe will take a week to reach the Earth's outer core.
There would be several problems with this theory as a suitable probe would be needed due to the fact that temperatures deep within the Earth rise to 1800 degrees celsius and pressures there are thousand times more than that of the the deepest ocean dept. Under those conditions most metals might corrode in the presence of liquid iron or dissolve with it.
I have learnt a lot from this article as this could mean we can actually know more about mother nature and this theory from Stevenson is also environmentally-friendly. Who knows what what we can find beneath the Earth's surface when metals can be served as suitable probes to be sent down. Some fairy habitat, dwarfs or maybe aliens. Perphaps, the energy below can be harnessed to fuel our vehicles that does not cause pollution. http://www.sciencenews.org/20030503/note11.asp
(Done by Nicholas Ng) index number 31 ¶ 4:20 PM
This particular idea came from geophysicist David J. Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Imagine this, we can blast a crack in the Earth's crust, pour in a few thousand tons of rock-busting molten iron, and then toss in a grapefruit-size instrument designed to ride the plunging elevator of liquid metal to the planet's core. He contends that such a mission to explore the Earth's interior is technically feasible.
People have drilled into our planet's crust to investigate conditions there, but even the deepest borehole penentrates only about 9 miles. Stevenson also mentions that Seismic analyses suggest that the continents, the thickest portions of Earths's outer layer, are between 200 and 250 km thick. Below that hardened crust lies the viscous mantle, which surronds a liquid outer core and a solid inner core that are both made predominantly of iron.
Stevenson's plan would be to exploit that property. If scientists pour molten iron into a narrow crack at least 300 meters deep, the pressure at the bottom of the fissure would be enough to fracture the rock there. As the crack grows deeper, the molten iron would flow downward and maintain pressure at the crack tip. The crack will seal after the iron passed by and the probe would travel about sixteen inches per second to the Earth's outer core and the probe will take a week to reach the Earth's outer core.
There would be several problems with this theory as a suitable probe would be needed due to the fact that temperatures deep within the Earth rise to 1800 degrees celsius and pressures there are thousand times more than that of the the deepest ocean dept. Under those conditions most metals might corrode in the presence of liquid iron or dissolve with it.
I have learnt a lot from this article as this could mean we can actually know more about mother nature and this theory from Stevenson is also environmentally-friendly. Who knows what what we can find beneath the Earth's surface when metals can be served as suitable probes to be sent down. Some fairy habitat, dwarfs or maybe aliens. Perphaps, the energy below can be harnessed to fuel our vehicles that does not cause pollution. http://www.sciencenews.org/20030503/note11.asp
(Done by Nicholas Ng) index number 31 ¶ 4:20 PM
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