A team led by Dr. Wen-Pin Hsieh at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Academia Sinica, has measured the thermal conductivity of iron and iron-silicon alloys at core’s high pressure-temperature conditions. His team demonstrated the thermal conductivity of iron-silicon alloy is much lower than previously thought. Combined with numerical modeling, they further found that the low thermal conductivity of core substantially delays its cooling, suggesting that the inner core could be older than two billion-years. Moreover, the thermal energy alone released by the core could sustain the operation of geodynamo. The research was published in the Nature Communications

Article Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17106-7