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In the “Early calculations” section it says that Lord Kelvin's calculations were wrong because he didn't know about radioactive decay, but mostly (“more significantly”) because he didn't take into account the convection in the mantle. I'm no geologist, but physical logic would imply the opposite: convection accelerates cooling, rather than delaying it. True, it transfers heat from the core to the base of the crust, increasing the gradient in the crust, but this is only temporary, and if it weren't for radioactivity the Earth would have cooled long ago. David Olivier (talk) 08:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The citation (England, P.; Molnar, P.; Righter, F. (January 2007).) accompanying that statement says on page 8 "{...} even if Kelvin had included radioactive heat in his calculation - his estimate of the age of the Earth would have been unaffected. Thus, the discovery of radioactivity did not invalidate Kelvin’s calculation for the age of the Earth. In a rigid Earth, with or without radioactivity, heat is delivered to the surface by conduction through a shallow layer, which can maintain a rate of heat loss comparable to today’s for only a small fraction of what we now know to be the Earth’s age." This seems to back up the existing wording in the article pretty well, so there doesn't seem to be a reason to change it for that reason.
It does seem to understate the effect of radiogenic heat in general though. I also am not an expert, but Earth's heat budget suggests that about 50% of the heat is from radioactive sources. Might be worth adding a link to the heat budget article. rtrb (talk) 21:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
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