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Can a giant tungsten ball with a diameter of 100 meters be thrown into the crater and directly hit the center of the earth?

  • Mosten
  • 13 Jan

Someone asked: if you throw a huge tungsten ball with a diameter of 100 meters into a crater, can the tungsten ball sink to the center of the earth?

This problem is really too big. My friend's idea is that the density of tungsten is very high, 19.25g/cm3, which is about the same as that of gold. The melting point of tungsten is the highest among all metals, reaching 3422 ℃, and the boiling point is as high as 5930 ℃, which is higher than the surface temperature of the sun. Tungsten is also very hard, so if it is thrown into the crater, it can pass through The molten magma channel continues to sink, like an iron ball in the deepest Mariana Trench on earth.

I have to admire this friend's rich imagination. Is it possible for a 100 meter diameter tungsten ball to sink all the way to the center of the earth?

First of all, the so-called sinking can only be realized in liquid. So this friend imagined putting the tungsten ball into the crater, because it was heavy, heat resistant and hard, it could sink in the magma. However, most of the magma chambers of volcanoes are very shallow, generally no more than 15 km. Even the mid ocean ridges on the seafloor are only about 50 to 60 km, and sometimes about 100 km deep. This means that when the tungsten ball sinks to such a depth, it will be blocked by the crust or mantle rocks and will never sink again.

But the mantle is made up of silicate. High temperature makes it ductile, so it will flow slowly for a long time. Therefore, in a sense, it can also be regarded as "liquid". Our crust "surfs" on this "liquid" mantle. According to the research of scientists, the subduction plate that submerges into the mantle can reach the junction of the earth's core and mantle. Does this mean that this huge and heavy tungsten ball with a diameter of 100 meters and a mass of 10 million tons can sink into the deep mantle in a long time? After a simple calculation, the pressure formed is far less than the compressive strength of the mantle rock. It takes a tungsten ball with a radius of about 1000 meters to crush the rock and continue to sink.

Well, even if all these conditions are met, the tungsten ball continues to sink to the junction of the mantle and the earth's core 2900 kilometers away. At this time, it encounters the earth's liquid outer core, molten iron and nickel, with a temperature of 4000 degrees Celsius. Now there's no way. Apart from melting and melting into the red iron and nickel, what else can it do? So that's the end of the journey to the center of the earth. It can't go deeper into the solid core.

In fact, tungsten has never been found on earth as a natural metal, but always in the form of compounds, which shows that it is a good man and likes to blend with other substances. So in the process of its sinking into the earth, it will be constantly pulled and retained by other elements of hospitality. It will become smaller and smaller. It is estimated that there will be nothing if it can't reach the deep mantle.

So you put a tungsten ball with a diameter of 100 meters into the crater, and it can't swim to the center of the earth. In addition, 10 million tons of tungsten ball, how do you put it into the crater? What's more, the proven tungsten reserves on earth are only 7 million tons, and the annual production is more than 100000 tons. Where can we find tungsten to make such a big tungsten ball?

Tags :
tungsten