I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Disease Zone. It has scientists studying theĀ causes and processes ofĀ illness . Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
ppffff…….hard question.
Again, it’s not my field of research (I’m doing medical research), but I think scientists don’t even know how it happened. We do know what it’s made of and how hot it is inside, but not how it happened….
0
Cool question, I had to go look up some of my old textbooks from when I was in school! It’s not my area of research, but here is what I found out from a bit of reading.
The Earth’s core has two parts, the Inner Core, and the Outer Core. The inner core is thought to be solid, mostly made up of iron and nickel, and has a temperature of over 5000oC! It can be this hot and still be solid because of all the pressure pressing in on the centre of the Earth, keeping it all hard and compact. The Outer Core is made of similar metals to the inner core, and is thought to range from 4000-6000oC, but because it is not under as much pressure as the Inner Core, it is liquid.
But how was it formed?
Many billions of years ago (after the Big Bang), its thought that there were clouds of dust particles floating around in space. These particles and elements were attracted to one another, forming disks thanks to gravity, and as more particles gathered together, the movement and formation of these disks got faster. As they got faster, they began to heat up. The centre of the disk would become a star, and clumps further from the centre would become hot balls of gas and liquid as well (again, thanks to gravity pulling them into spheres), though perhaps not as hot as the stars! Eventually, over billions of years, they began to cool, and become more solid, forming planets, including ours.
Of course, I’m not sure if this is still what the people that study the formation of the Earth’s core think. There are lots of webpages out there dedicated to this subject!
On a related, note, though slightly away from Earth, there is a cool explanation of how a planet made of moles (small furry animals) would form, including what would go on in the core, here.
1
Dear Awesomizor; You hit the core of the question about the earth by asking “How did the earth get its core?” You already knew that the earth is consisted of core and crust. It is very good question. I do not know any more than you do. I encourage you to keep asking questions about what you want to know and you will be ever closer to the answer.
0
Sorry, I can’t help on that one. But if I see a geologist wandering the halls, I’ll ask him or her for you. š
0
Hmm, that’s a hard one for a medical scientist like me. I did a bit of reading, but still cant figure out how to explain it – sorry! I think we need a geologist for this one….
0