this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Sounds like a stupidly easy question to find out with a quick internet search, but it's not.

I don't want to know the average surface temperature, or the average ocean surface water temperature, or read another article about climate change.
But that's all I found in the past hour.

I'd like to know the average temperature of all molecules that comprise earth, or a best guess scientific estimate.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

One thing that might help is knowing that the crust is very thin, 1% of the Earth’s mass. The core is 15% and the Mantle is 84%. But we don’t have to be too exact — the earth’s mantle isn’t one temperature

The Mantle ranges from 1000°C near the crust and 3700°C near the mantle. The core is starts there and gets up to 6000°C.

So, just a simple formula weighted by mass might be:

.84*((3700°C+1000°C)/2) + .15*((3700°C+6000°C)/2)

Which equals 2701.5°C. That answer might be fine for a Lemmy but an academic paper would have major error bars.

I also asked ChatGPT and Bard, out of curiosity. ChatGPT was more conservative and told me it’s hard to get anything besides a rough estimate. Bard warned about all that too but then said probably between 3000°C and 4000°C.

So, I’d say about 3000°C. My quick and dirty little formula could easily be +/- 1000°C and fall in Bard’s range.