Scientists admit they have no idea what’s heating the Earth

July 20, 2011 – JAPAN – Radioactive decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium in Earth’s crust and mantle is a principal source, and in 2005 scientists in the KamLAND collaboration, based in Japan, first showed that there was a way to measure the contribution directly. The trick was to catch what Kamioka Liquid-scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) dubbed geoneutrinos – more precisely, geo-antineutrinos – emitted when radioactive isotopes decay. KamLAND scientists have now published new figures for heat energy from radioactive decay in the journal Nature Geoscience. Based on the improved sensitivity of the KamLAND detector, plus several years’ worth of additional data, the new estimate is not merely “consistent” with the predictions of accepted geophysical models but is precise enough to aid in refining those models. One thing that’s at least 97-percent certain is that radioactive decay supplies only about half the Earth’s heat. Other sources – primordial heat left over from the planet’s formation, and possibly others as well – must account for the rest. The first signal comes when the antineutrino converts the proton to a neutron plus a positron (an anti-electron), which quickly annihilates when it hits an ordinary electron – a process called inverse beta decay.


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