Air Date: Week of March 30, 2007

Host Bruce Gellerman reports on a new study that measures, for the first time, the temperature 2,400 miles deep into the earth.

Transcript

GELLERMAN: Geophysicist Roger Searle is aboard the RRS James Cook He’s trying to figure out what happened to a missing piece of the earth’s crust beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Professor Searle’s research reveals the many gaps in our understanding of what happens deep within the earth where intense heat powers nearly all of the planet’s geological processes.

Exactly how hot is it down there? That’s a question scientists and theologians have been asking for centuries. Well, now, MIT geo-physicist Rob Van der Hilst has the answer and it’s published in the latest edition of Science magazine. His team used seismic waves to make the first direct measurements of the temperatures at the region where the mantel meets the molten outer core of the earth - 18 hundred miles down. They report it’s a sin scorching 7000 degrees Fahrenheit

It’s ground breaking research and it’s helped give the study of deep Earth Science the big mo! And later this year Japanese researchers will begin drilling four miles into the earth by far the deepest probe into our planet yet. It’s a half billion dollar effort in search of answers to that most fundamental of questions just what the hell is going on down there?

[MUSIC: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown “Fire!” from ‘Fire! The Story of Arthur Brown’ (Castle Recordings - 2003)]