Question: How hot is the core of the Earth?

Malgorzata Drwila answered on 15 May 2020:

Hi Ashley, thanks for your great question. Well the quick answer would be to tell you that we think the temperature of the Earth’s core is somewhere between 5000 and 6000 degrees Celsius. To put it in perspective, your oven at home probably reaches around 250 degrees Celsius at it’s maximum, so the centre of the Earth is about 20x hotter than that!

To go a little further, we could ask why is the Earth hot inside and where does this heat come from?

The answer to this is quite interesting and provides an explanation for all the volcanism, earthquakes and movement of tectonic plates that we commonly hear talked about in geography and geology classes.

Some of this heat comes from the initial formation of the planet right back at the beginning of the solar system when clumps of rocks floating in space collided into each other and stuck together. Over time more and more stuff clumped together and began to grow into a planet. Some of the energy from these early collisions remained as heat causing the inside to become hot… but that doesn’t explain all the heat! The other source of heat deep inside the planet comes from radioactive decay of materials such as Uranium and Potassium. Radioactive materials also provided the heat for the young Earth go through a process we call “Planetary Differentiation”. This is where the inside of the Earth separated into the core, mantle and crust. The heavy stuff (metals) sanks to the core and lighter stuff floated to the top!