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by thehappypm 285 days ago
if you lived in the Earth’s core (~6000k) the surface (~300k) would be a rounding error above absolute zero anyway
1 comments

> would be a rounding error above absolute zero anyway

Kind of joking: unless there are nonlinear effects near 300K? Fig 4 [1] seems to suggest that the thermal diffusivity of the mantle grows very fast as temperature declines past 300K... but the data stop at 200K.

Reason for initial comment: we could probably set up a spherical heat equation to guess how crust cooling would change heat conduction at the outer core. But I have absolutely no idea how to reason about changes in heat conduction affecting the convection dynamics that generate the field. I was silently hoping for one of the domain experts lurking this forum to see it and share wisdom. (But overall it was a silly question, I know).

[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...