No, you see, I wasn't kidding about the "molten even". The Earth wouldn't be temperate anytime soon. Soon being a few thousand years. Our good friend, mfaber, did some calculations
here so I'll just give the synapsis.
When a mass descends into a gravity well some of its energy of position is converted into energy of motion. We find, in fact, that mgh = .5mv
2; where, m is the mass, g is the acceleration due to gravity (Our good friend, mfaber, mistakenly said it was the gravitational constant so don't let that confuse you.), h is hight, and v is velocity. Well, m and g we're pretty much stuck with. (g will increase some as h gets lower, but that's a complication that only makes the situation worse for ya'll and the math harder for me, so let's ignore it.) That mean that v
2/h= k, a constant. In this case the constant is a constant amount of energy.
So, over the course of 40 days and 40 nights we have 4.525”10v
21 kg descending through a gravity well 100 km (Our good friend, mfaber, only used 10 km. Now really, who would leave a firmament lying around at only 10 km?) deep and bringing all that energy with it. Right about 40”10
5J/m
2/sec.
And I'm going to take a bit more of a detour here: 40”10
5J/m
2/sec can be rewritten 40”10
5J/sec/m
2. But why would I want to do that? Well, 1 J/sec = 1 Watt and "Watts" people practically understand. And from where do we understand them? Light bulbs. Ok, now, the filament of a light bulb is about 1 cm by 1 mm or 10
-5 m
2. So, multiply 40”10
5W/m
2 by 10
-5 m
2 and you get 40 Watts.
The entire surface of the Earth would have been subjected to the temperature of the filament of a 40 Watt bulb for 40 days and 40 nights. (Actually, the filament would have a higher specific heat then the materials in question and a consequently lower temperature, but that's a complication that only makes the situation worse for ya'll and the math harder for me, so let's ignore it.)
If you don't like my numbers you can refer to our good friend, mfaber's. His aren't too eco-friendly either, but he does allow for the survival of fused quartz.
Edited by lyx2no, : Misspoke.
Edited by lyx2no, : Missed another word.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.
- Thomas Jefferson