Matter tends to change its volume in response to changes in temperature--or, hot things tend to be expanded. Is the thermal expansion of Earth significant?
That is, is it significant when compared against a cooler or perhaps internally-inert Earth?
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Sign up to join this communityMatter tends to change its volume in response to changes in temperature--or, hot things tend to be expanded. Is the thermal expansion of Earth significant?
That is, is it significant when compared against a cooler or perhaps internally-inert Earth?
Here's a take on calculating earth's thermal expansion and shrinking, under certain assumptions mentioned in the text. It seems to me, from a short overview, that the core is assumed to be constant over the time. It focuses on the mantle part of the earth, its mineral phases and convetion. Take it with a grain of salt:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S167498711200148X
tl,dr: after consolidation, earth's radius was 120km larger than today. It shrank by 110km in a few million years, then expanded a bit (11km), then contracted by 8km, and subsequently contracted by around 12km to the present day.
If they say so :-)
There is no thermal expansion of the Earth. On the contrary, the Earth is very gradually cooling, and therefore shrinking, but so gradually that the effects are imperceptible and perhaps in the short term unmeasurable. You can see the process at work on Mars, which has over the course of 4.5 billion years lost much of its internal heat owing to its smaller size and greater distance from the sun. The result is that volcanism has ceased and the planet has a much thicker crust, but the core is still molten. Therefore Mars must have shrunk a little, but we don't know exactly how much because we have no precise measurements from four billion years ago.
Gravitational flexion ie. tides in the Earths outer regions caused by the moon, as well as decay of radioactive elements in the core and mantle, generate heat which reduces the rate at which the Earth cools. The Earth's loss of heat is so gradual that its interior still won't be completely inert when the sun expands to become a red giant in 5 billion years time. The Earth will then stop cooling and the surface will be scorched and probably melted, but it's nothing to worry about because 5 billion years is an almost unimaginably long time. Humans will have gone to join the dinosaurs billions of years earlier.