From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Oct 29 1997 - 02:36:43 MST
EvMick@aol.com writes:
> And I heard (somewhere,can't remember, no references..but recently....sorry)
> that some evidence had been "unearthed" that the core of the earth was a
> single (huge) iron crystal...
>
> In accordance with principles set forth in "Demon Haunted World"....is this
> bogus? or actually possible.
I'm not sure, and I'm not a geologist, astrophysicist or even a
physicist, but I would argue it is unlikely. The core is believed to
contain not just nickel-iron, but other heavy elements. This suggests
to me that the core cannot form a nice crystal lattice, and likely has
an amorphous structure. But a lot likely depends on the behavior of
this mixture at high pressures and temperatures; things can get rather
counterintuitive down there, so I wouldn't be totally surprised if it
occured.
Is there a geologist in the house? :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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