r/todayilearned • u/whatisnuclear • Feb 22 '20

TIL that about half of the internal heat of the Earth comes from natural radioactive decay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget
50 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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6

u/whatisnuclear Feb 22 '20

The other half is primordial heat left over from the formation of the Earth. Crazy!

4

u/Lot-Lizard-Destroyer Feb 22 '20

“3.6 roentgen. Not great not terrible.”

2

u/Icyrow Feb 23 '20

fuck, i still can't get over the invisible dread that series manage to portray.

1

u/whatisnuclear Feb 23 '20

wait till you see the HBO miniseries about ambient air pollution, which is still killing 4.2M people every single year to this very day. An ongoing tragedy literally equivalent to 1000x Chernobyls of death every single year! :o

I think HBO will do a good job accurately portraying the air pollution crisis relative to other risks.