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Talk:Age of Earth

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Surprising assertion about convection and temperature decrease

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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]