center of the earth

Done.

No assumptions involved. Yes, we can prove it. It can be derived easily from basic thermodynamics, and is especially true for wter, which has been investigated quite extensively. There's large books (e.g. Keenan & Keyes) on the properties of water under various situations, and DrJones posted a link earlier in this thread to a phase diagram (a standard way of showing what phases exist for a particular substance as a functionoaf presure and temperature) for water. I don;t have a link ot a phase diagram fro gold.

Andf you are not thinking. The heat that is transferring up from the lower regions (no matter how or when the Earth was created) is maintaining the surface temperature as it is while significant heat is being radiated to space. The heat that would be transferring to a supposedly cool core has nowhere to go; it would heat the core up until the material just under the surface of the Earth and the core of the Earth would be the same temperature. Heat always flows from hot to cold. The only question is how long it would take. Perhaps they could. When you come up with some positive evidence that those layers do exist, we'll be glad to discuss the idea. Exactly. The liquid holds up the Earth because it has nowhere to go. Therefore the liquid is pressurized, and we can calculate exactly what pressure it is at. No material is both cool and a liquid at those pressures, so the liquid is hot. Yes, although it's not posted on tehe Web as far as I can see, and you are goin to have to dig into the primary literature to find it. You might even have to derive some of it from the raw measurements. No, we would see that transition zone in the core.

Water can only be liquid with certain ranges of temperature and pressure. The more pressure, the hotter the water has to be in order to be liquid. At some pressures liquid water is impossible at any temperature (and at some temperatures liquid water is impossible at any pressure).Water under the pressure of the outer core is not liquid, not at any temperature. Look at the phase diagram for water taht DrJones linked to way back in this thread: The Phase Diagram of Water. The highest pressure at which liquid water can exist is about 1,000,000,000 Pascals (145,000 pounds per square inch, or about 10,000 atmospheres) and at that pressure the temperature of the water has to be at least 620K (656°F). But the pressure at the top of the outer core is 140,000,000,000 Pascals (see Earth which is 100 times too high for liquid water to exist at any temperature.

It has been presented. Many times.The outer core is liquid.The outer core is pressurized because it is supporting all the Earth above it.No material anywhere near as cool as Earth's surface temperature is liquid at the pressure of the outer core.Therefore, the temperature of the outer core is not anywehre near as cool as Earth's surface temperature.Give up protesting that nobody has "nailed it" and start addressing the evidence. The density of the outer core is between 10 g/cm³ (624 pounds per cubic foot) and 12.4 g/cm³ (768 pound per cubic foot) (this is, the density varies at different levels within the outer core). The pressure at the top of the outer core is 140,000,000,000 Pascals (20,000,000 pounds per square inch or about 1,400,000 atmospheres). There is no material (and we know a lot about a lot of materials, including gold and water and diamond) that is that dense and anywhere near Earth's surface temperature and liquid at that pressure. You want to argue otherwise, present your material and your evidence.

Percy, are you aware that it's not certain which you are addressing, Simple or Cosmo? See the last sentence of Message 254.

You remember wrong.

Take note of the subtitle above ... Yes! Combining things with oxygen is called "burning", and it releases lots of heat. It also removes oxygen from the air ... to get enough water to cause a significant portion of a global flood you would reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere to the point that all oxygen-breathing life would die. Burn 'em then suffocate 'em! You're just a fount of ideas on how to kill everything! You really shouldn't make assumptions like that; one man's "cooler" is another man's "hot enough to flay the flesh from Noah's bones". See below. And a fireball that sterilizes the entire Earth!! Yippee! And, even better yet, a hydrogen fireball is incredibly hot and would spread quickly throughout the atmosphere!!!!!!!!! Get 'em all!!!!!!Ever see the movie of the Hindenberg disaster? A hydrogen fireball is really something to see ... So, now you want a firestorm covering the entire earth! Did Noah have Nomex suits with built-in air supplies? Of course, he suffocates when his air supply runs out, so it's six of one death, half a dozen of another.Your link to the first paragraph of the Nature article doesn't work. It should be here. However, the entire paper is available on the Web at A quantum fluid of metallic hydrogen suggested by first-principles calculations (probably the PDF link at the bottom is the most convenient).

quote:

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However, some theoretical models4, 5 have also suggested that compressed hydrogen may form an unusual two-component (protons and electrons) metallic fluid at low temperature.

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This is a result that may or may not be true. Time will tell. But ...I have taken the liberty of reproducing Figure 2 from that paper, with two additions; the magenta "Pressure at the top of the outer core" line and the yellow "Earth surface temperature" line. The red curved line is the solid-liquid transition line. Below the red line is solid hydrogen. Above the red line is "ordinary" liquid hydrogen (which can't be the core liquid because is not dense enough, not by a long shot), and above the green dashed line is this theoretical new non-molecular liquid hydrogen. The line separating liquid from gaseous hydrogen is not shown. Melt curve of hydrogen predicted from first principles MD. The filled circles are experimental data from Refs. 6 and 7 and references therein, and the open squares are measurements from Ref. 8. Triangles indicate two-phase simulations where solidification (up) or melting (down) have been observed, and bracketed melting temperatures (Tm) are represented by open circles. As the phase boundary is approached, the period of coexistence increases and eventually the outcome becomes dependent on the choice of simulation parameters. This degree of arbitrariness is reflected in the error bars of Tm, which also include the standard deviation of the temperatures collected during the MD simulations. All experimental and theoretical points are given equal weight and fitted with a Kechin melt equation18 (solid line in the figure): Tm = 14.025 (1 + P/a)b exp(−cP) K, where P is in units of GPa, a = 0.030355, b = 0.59991, and c = 0.0072997. The open diamond marks the liquid-liquid transition from molecular to non-molecular fluid at 200 GPa {emphasis added - JonF}, and the estimated slope of this phase boundary is given by the dashed line. The error bar on the diamond symbol indicates the hysteresis effects during the simulation of the liquid-liquid transition.It's immediately obvious that the coldest that ordinary liquid hydrogen can be at the outside of the Erth's core is where the magenta dotted line intersects the red line, about 800K (just under 1,000°F or 800°C). Gosh all hemlock, Buffalo Bob, that sure is some cold liquid, ain't it! But this new, theoretical non-molecular liquid hydrogen would have to be much hotter to be the core liquid! Extrapolating hte green line to an intersectino with the yellow line, it would be around 1,300K (1,880°F or 1,030°C).Second, I bet the density doesn't fit ... to make it a viable hypothesis you need to know the density. Regular liquid hydrogen is 0.07 grams per cc, 150 times too low to be the core liquid. And I'll bety that the density doesn't increas by a factor of 150 in this possible pase transition! Until we have some reason to believe that the density of this theoretical liquid fits the data (around 10 grams per cc), it's not a viable hypothesis. But I doubt you like this hypothesis now, anyway, 'cause as usual it kills everything.Summary: 1,880°F liquid hydrogen erupts from the Earth (killing just about everything in its vicinity), cools slightly by boiling into gaseous hydrogen, ignites into a fireball that kills all life that survived the original eruption, and removes most of the oxygen from the atmosphere so any oxygen breathers that somehow survived the fireball die of suffocation. You sure you like that scenario?{fixed arror: "10 grams per cc" was "109 grams per cc"}This message has been edited by JonF, 02-07-2005 10:44 AM

Probably nowhere other than the 300 post limit. But I've learned a few things, so it's not a total waste.

Taking my own advice (I was pretty sure, but it's worth checking): Let's run some numbers. Waltie-poo says that approximately half the water in the Earth's oceans today came from the fountains of the deep. That's 158,500,000 cubic miles (Where is Earth's water located?), or 2.33309*10¹⁹ cubic feet, or 1.49318*10²¹ pounds, or 2.38908*10²² ounces, or 6.77305*10²³ grams. Since water is H₂O and the molecular weight of H is 1 and the molecular weight of O is 16 (close enough for this calculation), 16/18 of this weight is oxygen, or 6.02049*10²³ grams of O in half the world's oceans.The Eart's atmosphere contains about 5.1*10²¹ grams (Earth's atmosphere), of which about 21% or about 1.1*10²¹ grams is oxygen.6.02049*10²³/1.1*10²¹ = 0.06.To get the water Waltie wants by combining hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen would use up all the oxygen in the atmosphere almost 20 times over.

Tough question. As I said, I've learned a few interesting things (that I might not have learned otherwise) in researching my answers in this and other threads, and that's a good thing. But doing it with less aggravation from ill-considered and ludicrous flights of fancy would be more fun.And there's always the fight for Truth, Justice, and the Way of whatever country in which you happen to reside. As The Straight Dope puts it, "fighting ignorance since 1973 (it's taking longer than we thought)".When you get right down to it, all creationist claims in the arena of science are devoid of evidence and reason. If you are going to host science forums on EvC, you're going to have to put up with a level of time-wasting. Walt's worse than many, and simple/cosmo is worse than most Waltophiles ... but where the rubber meets the road it's your forum and you and the admin crew have to decide how much of this cr*p you're going to allow in the cause of free and meaningful discussions. It's a job I'd rather not have.

Is there no idea that's too moronic for you to spew out without thinking?You have years and years of study ahead of you before you will be able to come up with ideas that are merely wrong. What you're coming up with now must require the aid of powerful hallucinogens. Yes, at a temperature of well over 1,000°F. It said something about being similar to other forms of liquid hydrogen which are liquid near absolute zero and at low pressure. As I've written many a time in this thread:Any liquid at the pressure found in Earth's core is much hotter than Earth's surface temperature. You're missing a lot. Over and over agian. Nope. Electrolysis is a method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Although the reaction can be run backward, it can't be run backward by electrolysis.(Were you really setting up to have batteries the size of the Moon running billions of amperes throught this hydrogen as it erupted?)Hydrogen combining with oxygen is an exothermic reaction; it releases energy, the same amount of energy, no matter how it's carried out. Sorry, no. The heat of combining hydrogen with oxygen gets released no matter how you do it ... and, as I showed, you use up far more than all the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere doing it.This message has been edited by Admin, 02-07-2005 16:52 AM

Mercury is too dense to be the liquid at the Earth's core.At the pressure of the Earth's core, mercury is a solid unless it is very hot.At the pressure of the Earth's core, the only liquid that matches all the evidence is iron with a touch of nickel ... and very, very, very hot.

No, no substance that has the right density could do that. Nope, any substance or substances that is (are) liquid at that pressure are hot. Nope, we have pretty detailed maps of exactly how the density varies with depth; I posted one earlier. You need to have the right density at the right point for all points below the surface of the Earth.

Ah, the old "no true scotsman" fallacy.As you know, you agreed that when you make assertions around here you will support them with discussion and evidence. Please support that assertion in the "True science" must include God? topic. Certainly not if your performance in this thread is any indication of your knowledge and ability. No need for that; no worries, no problem. You're no threat to the established theories. You're too blinded by your preconceptions to see the light. Creationsits have been trying for many years to show that it does, and they've failed miserably in both the scientific and legal arenas. Especially in the legal arenas, where they've been trying awfully hard to conceal their religious motivations but failed .. because there's absolutely no scientific reason for wanting their twaddle taught in the schools, and that's still obvious to a casual observer.{edited to add link to new thread}This message has been edited by JonF, 02-09-2005 08:10 AM