Like fossil fuels come from organic matter that grew because of the sun. Is there any form of energy on that cannot be traced back to the sun in some way?

  • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Do you have any source for the radioactive decay part? I always thought the Earth was hot inside simply because it hasn’t finished cooking down from when it formed as a ball of molten stuff. Like a hot potato.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      Uh, I’ll find one, and edit. It confused the shit out of Victorian scientists, because they had a good guess how old the Earth is from biology, and had thermodynamics, but it was telling them volcanism shouldn’t still be happening.

      Edit:

      Wikipedia mentions it in the geothermal article, but the source is a textbook, and who has time and/or money for that? There’s also the article on the age of the Earth. Ah, here we go, in the article on Earth’s internal heat budget. Somebody also linked a paper on it elsewhere in this thread.

      These give slightly different numbers from each other, but the gist is that radioisotopes (Uranium, Thorium and Potassium being the primordial ones) account for at least half.

      • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Oh interesting. It turns out it’s more like a demonically possesed hot potato, that is still cooling down but also gets warmer from demonic activity under the earth.

        • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 months ago

          More like a hot banana, going by the potassium.

          I actually had no idea radioactive potassium was primordial until I read this. That’s neat.