All articles tagged with #heat flow
A 400-million-year computer-model study shows Earth's cooling is uneven: the Pacific hemisphere has shed about 50 Kelvin more heat than Africa, driven by rapid heat loss through the thinner seafloor and the vast Pacific Ocean, while continental regions trap heat; the findings illuminate a long-standing hemispheric heat disparity rooted deep in Earth's tectonic history.
Recent measurements show that Enceladus, a moon of Saturn with a subsurface ocean, is leaking more heat from its north pole than previously thought, indicating a delicate energy balance that has kept its ocean stable over long periods, making it a promising candidate for supporting life.
NASA's analysis of data from the Cassini spacecraft reveals that Saturn's moon Enceladus is emitting heat from both its north and south poles, indicating a stable, long-lasting underground ocean that could support life, with implications for future exploration.
Physicists have developed a new method to detect quantum entanglement by measuring anomalous heat flow, which can serve as a non-destructive thermometer for quantumness, leveraging the unique properties of quantum mechanics to potentially improve quantum computing and explore gravity's quantum nature.
MIT physicists have captured direct images of "second sound," the movement of heat sloshing back and forth within a superfluid, for the first time. This breakthrough will expand scientists' understanding of heat flow in superconductors and neutron stars, and could lead to better-designed systems. The team visualized second sound in a superfluid by developing a new method of thermography using radio frequency to track heat's pure motion, independent of the physical motion of fermions. The findings will help physicists get a more complete picture of how heat moves through superfluids and other related materials.
Scientists have discovered a hot spot on the Moon's far side using data from Chinese orbiting spacecraft. The rocks beneath an ancient volcano on the Moon's far side remain surprisingly warm, with a heat flow 20 times higher than the average for the highlands. The source of the hotspot is not active volcanism but rather radioactive elements within the now-solidified rock that was once molten lava billions of years ago. This finding could help scientists better understand the Moon's past, but further research is needed to determine how such a feature can exist without water or plate tectonics.
Geophysicists at the University of Leeds have found that the way the Earth's super-hot core is cooled is key to understanding the anomalies of the Earth's magnetic field. Variations in the cooling process cause localized changes to the properties of the magnetic field, resulting in weaker magnetic fields that can interfere with orbiting satellites. The anomalies are likely caused by differences in the rate at which heat flows from the Earth's core into the mantle, and where these differences happen in the Earth's inner structure is likely to dictate how long they could last.