How long would it take for the earth to freeze?

If the Earth was far from a star and being heated only from within from the mantle it would cool to an average blackbody equal to the geothermal flux. That would happen very quickly-a few days or so.

Jim,

The earth is not a black body, it would continue to be heated by the mantal and nuclear enegry at its core.

The earth is an enormuos object and could never cool off to feezing point in a few days

It would take billions of years to freeze, not a few days. But lets wait and see if there are any other comments

Thanks for the reponse

Alan

I feel as if I am a small boy holding but a teaspoon of knowledge standing before the Infinity Ocean of all knowledge

Hi Alan, I never said the Earth would freeze-I said it would cool down to its natural temperature which, by the way, is not known at this time. But, the blackbody temperature of the Earth is somewhere near 250k. The sun warms the surface from that point to a nice warm place to live. The interior might not cool at all or very little. Lots of detail that is unknown to science at this time of ignorance and modeling based upon on that foundation.

Jim,

The average temperature of the whole earth is an unknown. By natural temperature do you mean temperature average? of the entire earth, averaging the extremely high temperatures of the core, mantel surface, continents and oceans. Like the present ear sensor now used to get our average body temp

If we knew this it would be a start to create formulae and extrapolate the time it would take to cool down to absolute zero as it must and will over some huge time scale

The interior must cool due to entropy but it will take an enormous time to do so, billions of years in my view

Alan


I feel as if I am a small boy holding but a teaspoon of knowledge standing before the Infinity Ocean of all knowledge

Alan, How these things work is not known at this time. The Earth is generating energy within its mantle, but, how much or how it is being generated is just not known. I don't agree with your conclusion about the Earth cooling down to zero or anyway near that no matter how far out in the future you go. Its pointless to project into the future and believe any of this stuff can be known with the current poor understanding of the universe.

Jim,

No question is pointless, and yes the earth will continue to produce energy from within, But I can speak with some authority on the subject of energy transmission as this is my field of expertise.

Everything in the universe is subject to entropy all thing go from order to disorder or zero entropy to maximum entropy the only factor is how long

I thought this forum was about boldly tackling topics, not just leaving then up in the air unanswered

Alan


I feel as if I am a small boy holding but a teaspoon of knowledge standing before the Infinity Ocean of all knowledge