Contrary to our daily experiences, the ground below us is a whole lot more than dirt, grass and bugs. The Earth's core is filled with all sorts of oddities, including massive crystals, and spinning spheres.
From the literal gold mine sitting beneath our feet to the planetary collision that led to Earth as we know it, here are 20 strange facts that are literally hiding at the center of our planet.
1
The inner core of the earth can reach temperatures up to 5,000°C to 6,000°C, which is as hot as the surface of the Sun.
2
“In 1823 Martin Van Buren's Vice President proposed in the US Senate that the government fund an expedition to the center of the Earth. His ’pet project’ was soundly defeated, garnering 25 votes total.”
3
“Fission nuclear reactors can form naturally in the Earth’s crust. In 1972, evidence of a 100kW, two-billion year old reactor was found in Oklo, Gabon.”
4
“Inge Lehmann, who discovered that the centre of the Earth is solid, is also one of the longest lived scientists in history, living to 104 years of age and wrote her last scientific article at 99.”
5
“Theoretically a gravity train through the center of the Earth, would take just 42 minutes to travel to any other location on Earth”
6
“In 1818, John Cleves Symmes Jr. presented his Hollow Earth Theory which proposed openings at the poles for access to concentric spheres inside the Earth. His tomb has a memorial of a globe with a spherical opening at the pole.”
7
Scientists believe that the inner core of the Earth is not only slowing, but may be reversing.
8
The Earth’s inner has a diameter of 2,442 kilometers, which is roughly the distance between New York City and the middle of Nebraska
9
“The Earth's inner core is so hot that it will take 91 billion years for it to cool enough to solidify. That is 86 billion more years than the 5 billion it will take for the sun to run out of hydrogen!”
10
“Earth's mantle is so extremely viscous that it takes at least 50 million years to complete a convection circuit. The mantle has only moved an average of 18 feet since the pyramids were built.”
11
“There is more water in the Earth's mantle, bound up in a crystal called Ringwoodite, than there is in all the Earth's oceans.”
12
“The crust of the Earth is so thin, that it makes up 1% of the earth's volume that contains all known life in the universe and can be compared with a Peel of an apple.”
13
“The earth's mantle is predominantly solid due to extreme pressure, though it behaves as a ‘viscous fluid’ on geologic time scales.”
14
“That the main component of the Earth's upper mantle is a yellow-greenish mineral called olivine.”
15
“There is enough gold to cover the entire Earth by 13 inches. However, most of the gold is in Earth's core.”
16
“Deep within the Earth lies the remains of a planet that crashed into it billions of years ago.”
17
“The Mariana Trench has been proposed as a site for nuclear waste disposal,in the hope that tectonic plate subduction occurring at the site might eventually push the nuclear waste deep into the Earth's mantle.”
18
“The deepest humans have ever drilled into the Earth is 12,262 meters.”
19
“The heat of the Earth's core has nothing to do with pressure. Rather, most of it is energy produced by radioactive decay and the rest is trapped heat remaining from when the planet formed.”
20
“Due to gravitational time dilation, the Earth's core is 2.5 years younger than the surface.”
