Reply To: Animated nuclear reaction.

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jamesr wrote: The total rate of heat loss currently by the earth is given as 4.2-4.4*10^13W. ie. we are loosing twice as much heat as is is now being made – hence the earth is cooling. In the past the radioactive heating component would have been much larger, exponenitally so, given the nature of radioactivity. Whereas the tidal heating would have been roughly the same. Hence over the age of the earth the proportion of the stored heat due to radioactivity will be much higher than the current heat generation ratio.

OK, my interpretation of what you claim this fellow said is he has computed the theoretical amount of heat generated by radioactive decay in the crust of the earth. He has evidently put some nice equations together and has some numbers.

And you come along and accept it as fact without question. Moreover you accept his assertion that the earth must be cooling.

Dude, it’s just a theory. It may be right. It may be wrong. But it’s not proof. You behave as if it is proof. And you get offensive when other people (such as myself) don’t accept it as fact.

Personally I’d have been more persuaded by an argument related to the thermal conductivity of 100 miles of rock (as in the crust of the earth). We know how well rock conducts heat.

As far as I know there are two bodies in the solar system with volcanic activity — the earth and Io. Both have large tidal forces acting on them. Venus has no volcanic activity, and presumably has the same radioactive makeup as the earth, and is about the same size, yet has no large tidal forces acting on it.

“Science is the belief in the fallability of experts” — Richard Feynman

-Dave