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Asked by hlh606 to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: is it possible to go to the center of the earth? if yes how?
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Laura Maliszewski answered on 21 Jun 2010:
Nope, the center of the earth is a spinning soup of hot magma and iron. Nothing can survive those temperatures!
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Paul Roche answered on 21 Jun 2010:
Not at the moment, and maybe never – the temperature there is about the same as the surface of the Sun (nearly 6,000 degrees), and the pressure is immense, so you would be crushed and melted! It’s molten iron and nickel in the outer core, then a solid ball of iron ?(we think…) at the inner core.
To study what it is like down there, we can use earthquakes (as they send seismic waves right through our planet, which acts a bit like radar, allowing us to figure out something about the conditions down there), lab experiments, chemistry and even astronomy – iron meteorites are thought to be solid pieces of the once-molten cores of ancient mini-planets (“planetismals”) from when the solar system formed.
So we don’t need to go there, as science can tell us most of what we want to know – but maybe one day they will build a robot that could survive the journey?
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Lily Asquith answered on 21 Jun 2010:
It is *theoretically* possible, if you just kept drilling down. But the core of the planets is very, very hot. The outer core is made of molten iron, which could be difficult to drill through, as you can only drill through solid. I guess you’d have to use some sort of pump for that bit. And the materials you used would have to be able to withstand the temperatures and pressures down there.
Also there is a danger of waking the hibernating lizard people.
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Mark Roberts answered on 21 Jun 2010:
Erm I don’t think it will be due to the heat and pressure in there.
So whilst in theory you could there are huge technical challanges in overcoming the heat and pressure to get there.
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