Why is it that even though the center of the Earth is molten rock, that everything around it is solid?

Question

We have all been told that the center of the Earth is molten rock, but since it is at such high temperature then why isn't everything else just melted? The same way that even though the surface of venus is between 400 degrees F and 740 K (hot enough to melt lead) why isn't the planet just molten rock?

Answer 1

Everybody seems to have missed one little thing. The Earth's core isn't molten rock. It's molten iron. Whether or not something is molten depends on pressure and temperature. The temperature at the inner core is high enough to overcome the pressure that tries to keep it solid.

Answer 2

As evidenced by the lava that comes out of a volcano, then cools and hardens once it reaches the air, water and land, As you travel away from the core, it cools. Now just why the core continues to harbor molten magma, how it got there in the first place, etc., is still mostly theory. Best conjecture is compression and pressure from the sheer mass of the Earth pushing into it due to gravity.

NOTE: The Sun is 332,930 times as massive as the Earth, and is totally aflame at a temperature of 15,000,000 deg, K. More mass, more gravity, more pressure, more heat. By the way, the Sun contains 99.9% of all the matter that exists in our Solar System!

Hope that's what you're looking for.

Answer 3

Molten means fluid.
Water is a fluid so is glass,they differ in viscosity.
Water on the ground will spread out immediately a piece of glass may take hundreds or thousands of years to spread the same way.
Molten rock is a fluid but is confined by it's weight and the force of gravity.

Answer 4

in many situations. you will possibly be surrounded by employing people who're there with you bodily, even if this is all relating to the way you your self experience interior, and loneliness can nonetheless be felt, even while in business company. I frequently experience this way, as I suffered from melancholy and rigidity for some years, and no remember how many human beings have been with me - family, acquaintances - I nonetheless felt miserably lonely and remoted from each physique and each little thing, as this is not uncomplicated for others to truly 'get' somebody with melancholy and different psychological well-being subject concerns. once you experience rather lonely and on my own interior, this is not correct who's next to you, what they are asserting to you.....this is basically the way you experience. I additionally experience lonely with my issues too, and the concerns I even have approximately my existence often, like i'm thoroughly on my own with them, yet then i think of that isn't totally unusual. many human beings experience that way now and lower back. wish you're ok although. :)

Answer 5

Pressure. Substances do some odd things under really high pressures, and the pressure at the center of the earth is really high.

Answer 6

I don't really know the real answer to your question, but I think it is similiar to my girlfriend's casserole. It somehow stays uncooked on the outside, but is crusted burnt on the inside.

Answer 7

You could ask the same thing of a cherry pie.