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Considering it takes a few thousand years to find buried treasure and old artifacts relating to life on this planet, how is it we KNOW what the earth is made up from ?

The deepest drill was 12 kms in 1980s but according to science there are 6,371 kms to the centre of the earth ( in a straight line.) How do they know that ?

The centre of the earth is solid iron ! How do they know that ? Are they going on assumptions , because scientist do get things wrong, and if the earth should end, I wonder how would it end ? I can;t see it blowing up , but I can see humans destroying life in the not too distant future.

We seem to have come to a transition period atm from human activity to AI. This will surely be the beginning of the human senses, brain thought process and activity closing down. Is it fair on our gt grandchildren's children , if human birth is still available by then ?

We will come to an end as a human race, we have to , and will the scientist have handed over all their data to technology to decide who will be saved and who will not ? Will the sceintists regret their meddling into the future after the event , just like Robert Oppenheimer ?

What do you think ? How can we know the centre of the earth be solid iron ?

https://rockbout.weebly.com/layers.html

If members can't find something to discuss and expand on this , then I give up.

Louis Armstrong What a Wonderful World
Unfortunately not a scientist thoe watched a Movie in late 70s called Soylent Green and living through the decades believe this could be one reality thoe with China playing the 3rd Reich believe Armageddon will be hear before sea dies

I once had a pet budgie, gave it the binman in the end. It kept pecking me, evil little beast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150814-what-is-at-the-centre-of-earth

Science is empirical. That is, it is about testing evidence and determining facts whether we like them or not.

The best thing about science is that it doesn't give a toss about idiot ideologies such as fascism, socialism, Christianity, or Islam.

That's a fascinating article about what is at the Earth's core; thanks for sharing it.

It might help if we step back from the Covid and Brexit worries and look at the big picture. I think the human race could well be likened to an unsightly rash on the skin of Gaia, really quite short-lived in the grand scheme of things. How the rash heals, and who survives, only time will tell. Some species will fail, some will thrive. Life in some sort will continue unless the environment becomes too hostile.

Modern technology is only as good as its weakest link, and is vulnerable to various outside influences. Solar storm = no internet, no satnav, no mobile communications etc etc. What price technological advances then? We already rely on it to an unhealthy extent.

I’m thinking on same lines as you Greenwood, think one day all this technology will collapse and humans will have to go right back to good old survival mode. God knows how the young ones would survive without their mobile phones but somehow they would have to....
That is as you say if the Earth survives in some form or another, I’ll be long gone but worry for future generations but I guess they’ll just get in with it.
Mind Boggling eh!

Very interesting, and as it;s so late, I will read again in the morning because it's quite a lot to take in all at once, philmch. Science might not give a toss about ideologies etc, but science doesn''t have emotions either which are built in to the human race . However, science can strip that away if needed.

Relating to Greenwood and Cools, so much is now controlled by technology, we see what's happened over the last few months and how huge changes have been forced to control a bad situation.
I wonder, in this world of globalisation what could happen if one major player had complete overiding control of our technology. I'm sure that could easily happen one day. Absolutely everything could be brought to a standstill, petrol pumps, traffic lights, emergency calls, hospital theatres , all data relating to individuals ..... everything . Quite scary , the whole system would break down and anarchy take over.
That's how I see it. Could be wrong of course, but we seem to have reached a point of conflict in every continent and in most cases there doesnt seem to be much overall concern . We are killing each other on a masssive scale in various ways, whilst others are still living in caves and hunting their daily rations. I wonder who the winners will be ?

Watch "The Core" if you want a good laugh about the earth's innards.

Science might come across as "cold" but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have ethics. For example, the gene editing tool CRISPR could conceivable be used to edit out sickle cell anaemia. It is generally agreed amongst geneticists that it shouldn't be used to create designer babies.

We've long been worried about apocalyptic visions of humanity. In the 1980s we were all sent the Protect And Survive booklet. We thought nuclear warfare was inevitable and imminent. It never happened, even under Thatcher, Reagan, and Brezhnev; a triumvirate of seeming idiots. Elon Musk's people have recently planted a working silicon chip into the brain of a pig. That doesn't mean that humanity will ultimately become Cybermen or Homo Sapiens 2.0.

Most of the things you are talking about are known because someone found a way of working it out.

The diameter of the earth was first accurately measured by one Eratothenes of Alexandria some 2,000 years ago using no more than a stick and his brain.The earth doesn't have a solid iron core, it has a liquid iron one. How do they know this? By analysing earthquakes the other side of the world Pressure waves pass through liquid, transverse waves don't. If you receive pressure waves only, then its passing through liquid.

How do they know its liquid iron rather than liquid custard? Because pressure waves move at a particular speed through liquids like iron, By timing how long the waves take to pass through the earth you can deduce what it is if you know the extent or the liquid. That can be deduced by studying refraction of pressure waves through it. There is also the factor of the earth's density which supports this conclusion.

Do not assume that because you don't know that nobody does.

As to destroying life on this planet, I doubt that. We may destroy ourselves, but as its recently been shown that pacteria can survive in space outside the ISS for three years, and other have been found that will survive boiling water, I suspect that life is a bit tougher than we give it credit for.

The scientific community has gone back to thinking the earth's core is solid. Its been an ongoing theory since 1938 from measurements taken then but two or three years ago new measurements confirmed a solid core which is also backed up by theoretical calculations.

We nearly did have a nuclear war, didn't we ? Now we have the same two sides who patched things up a bit, being created into enemies again. US wants supremacy and control over all things. They are riding rough shod throughout the world atm. When is another going to hit back. They all know the dangers of retaliation, which US also knows they know, giving US clear space to continue with their endeavours of divide and conquer .

We need to rethink our reliance upon nature for our survival. All we seem to do is breed more animals for food and laboratory testing/ experiments . Take them from the wild for human gain and medicines. Teaching monkeys to 'mind read ' ... what for ? Because they do, for no apparent reason. That's scientific experiment !!
The tribes of yesteryear knew how to manage their wildlife, the north American Indians know how to manage their wildlife, Acceptible Amazon fires for clearing land and making profit is all above board, but Californian and Australian fires are considered to be disasters (which they are) . No difference, they all decimate our wild life and natural surroundings that our wildlife need for survival.

Worldwide, approx 68 % of wildlife populations have fallen in 50 yrs. Nature is so balanced, (or was) we are now beginning to tip the wrong way. Going to the moon won;t help, wars won't help, all that man created won't help.

We will die off as a species by disease or virus, probably coming out of Africa , due to the fact that the scavengers are dying off, leaving rotting carcasses and disease to spread .
Bottom line is , too many people, not enough food, and disease... ..that paints a picture of desperation, which for 100's millions it is already.

What would happen if one of our planets blew up or died in some way ?
We won't experience, but if it should happen , what would the result be ? Would.suns gravity be altered, and would we find the earth drawn closer to the moon, or in a similar balancing act see other planets move closer to us ? Earth is said to be moving further away from the sun, due to the suns weakening gravity. (don;t know how they can judge that either from 5 billin years ago)

All this is far too clever to be an accident.

https://nineplanets.org/questions/getting-closer-sun/

quote " The gravity from the sun causes our planet to move in a curved, elliptical path. Thankfully, the planets are moving fast enough so that they are not pulled into the sun, which would destroy Earth. On the other hand, we are also not moving quickly enough to escape the sun's pull."

Although earth's orbit is primarily affected by the sun, its actually a crazy wobbly orbit affected by the planets, it is so crazy that they can't predict it accurately, there is a continual update of earths orbital parameters to try and keep some sense of reality.

The main influences are the Sun, Jupiter and Venus, but just as we a wobbled, all the other planets (and the Sun) are also wobbled which is what makes it so complex.

The most influence is when the planets are at their closest distance, most of the time their direct influence is negligible, every time there is a close pass there is a slingshot effect, even a small change to a slingshot makes a large change to the outcome (similar to chaos theory or lensing).

Having a large amount of fluid (not just water) complicates the issue even further similar to the sloshing of a liquid in a container.

Overall, if a planet disappeared it would probably make little difference to out average orbit but with a lot of caveats.

Back to cores .....

A bit of a trick question and something that is slightly difficult to correctly conceptualise, what you generally believe is correct, however under scrutiny it can cast some doubt .......

Maximum gravity is roughly at the outer edge of the outer core (about halfway to the centre of the earth), there is zero gravity at the centre of the earth and very little gravity near to the centre of the earth. Why is heavy iron attracted to the centre of the earth instead being attracted to where gravity is greatest?

This can be further complicated if you thing of a spherical shell (a hollow sphere), would an object somewhere inside the shell be attracted to the centre or to the shell?

Was all that off the top of your head D.D? It might be nice to give credit to your sources once in a while.