Fun fact 10 of 10
10. The center of the Earth is as hot as the surface of the Sun
At the center of the Earth, more than 6,000 kilometers beneath our feet, the temperature is around 5,000 to 6,000 °C, similar to the surface of the Sun.
A core of solid and liquid metal
The Earth is made of layers. Beneath the crust, where we live, lies the mantle, made of hot rock that moves very slowly. Deeper still is the outer core, of liquid iron and nickel, and at the center, the inner core, a ball of metal about 1,200 kilometers in radius.
Since no one can go there, the temperature is estimated through experiments. In 2013, researchers in France squeezed iron between diamonds and heated it with a laser, simulating the pressure at the Earth's center, and reached about 6,000 °C.
Even so hot, the inner core is solid. The pressure there is about 3.6 million times that of the surface, and the iron cannot melt. The outer core, under less pressure, remains liquid. We know this because earthquake waves change behavior as they pass through each layer.
The movement of liquid iron in the outer core generates the Earth's magnetic field. It is what makes the compass point north and deflects much of the charged particles coming from the Sun, protecting the atmosphere.
Did you know? When some of these particles from the Sun manage to enter near the poles, they make the air glow in the sky: these are the auroras, called boreal in the north and austral in the south.
The 10 fun facts in this list
- There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way
- The farthest point from the center of the Earth is not the top of Everest
- The days are getting longer
- About half of the oxygen comes from the ocean
- The Mariana Trench could swallow Everest with room to spare
- About 44 lightning strikes hit the planet every second
- The Sahara was once green
- Antarctica is the largest desert in the world
- Lake Baikal is the deepest and oldest lake in the world
- The center of the Earth is as hot as the surface of the Sun
Where this information comes from: Nature, 2015 (number of trees); Guinness World Records (Chimborazo); NASA (lightning, length of the day, Sahara dust); NOAA (ocean oxygen); Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 2020 (dinosaur day); Nature Communications, 2023 (green Sahara); Science, 2013 (core temperature); INPE (lightning in Brazil); UNESCO (Baikal).
