Wayne Stollings wrote:
Milton Banana wrote:
Another question if I may. Is there another heat source for the Earth other than the Sun?
The internal heat from the core adds a small amount, but the majority comes from the sun.
The core of the earth is powered by slow decay of radioactive metals as well as left-over heat from when our solar system was formed. It is a source of heat but the mile or two of cooled rock acts as insulation keeping the heat inside. Solar influences the temperature of the top 12 feet (roughly) of soil... that is, the few hot months raise the temperature down to that level then the few cool months cool that same 12 feet back down. Below that is the slow-moving heat from the core causing steady heat.
Another source of heat is gravity slowing down the earth and moon in the form of tides and possibly heating the core as well.
A small amount of ions and electrons hit the earth and heat up the atmosphere. Most of those particles come from our sun but some are left-over clouds of them from various arms of our galaxy or even other galaxies that can collide with our arm of the galaxy. No matter the source, they are attracted to the poles by the magnetism of the Earth (good thing we have a magnetic field in the earth and good thing the magnetic poles are near the rotation poles or we would be stripped of atmosphere by these particles) and produce the northern lights (and southern lights). We usually just add them to the sun's input but wanted to point out that some is interstellar clouds from other sources.
All of the galaxy is sending us some infrared radiation (and a bit of other radiation like light from stars) which warms a few degrees but that is a continuous thing and is radiated back out by us but has to be accounted for in the math
and finally you have some mechanical energy heating us (along with more radioactive metals) from meteorites hitting us.