Arkansas publik edukumashun. Who needs this science shit!

This is why religion will always be around.

Someone please explain this to me. Not the science part, I get that.

Did someone make this as a mash-up to make fun of the "StonedCommander"?

Is there an original video of this Q&A?

I think the creator of this video meant to contrast scientific knowledge against stupendous ignorance. Rather like Sagan's thought experiment of the immovable object and the irresistible force. What _would_ happen if these two got into the same room and Sagan brought out all his science shit to answer this trode's ignorance?

*promote

Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 12:48am PDT - promote requested by original submitter Zonbie.

This Sagan guy seems kind of shady, let's fact check him

He says if you build a mountain significantly taller than Everest it will be crushed under its own weight. Let's see:

Everest is made of limestone and dolomite (among other minerals). They have a compressive strength of about ~150 megapascals. That means a surface area of Mount Everest can sustain up to 150 million Newtons of force before crushing.

Limestone and dolomite have a density of about 2,500 kg / m^3. Each such cubic meter would exert roughly 25,000N of force downward in Earth's gravity. So how high can we stack this stuff before the base crushes?

(150MPa / 25KN/m^3) = (150,000,000 N / m^2 ) / ( 25,000 N / m^3 ) = 6000 meters.

You might note that Everest is, in fact, taller than 6000m. But it is not completely vertical and it likely has some materials with higher compressive strengths at its base.

Once you enter the Earth's mantle, then rocks are in an environment with pressures higher than their compressive strength, leaving them to behave slightly like fluids and thus seek the minimum energy configuration of a sphere.

At the bottom of the Earth's mantle, you get to pressure's of about ~136 GPa, 1,000 times higher than our hypothetical column of Everest.

sources
http://www.geocities.com/unforbidden_geology/rock_properties.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_(geology)

It's interesting that if you look at a cross section of the Earth, the crust is obviously solid, while the upper mantle is so hot that it is very fluid-like. The deeper, lower mantle, while much hotter than the upper mantle, is under so much more pressure that it is actually very nearly solid. Then the outer core is melted nickel-iron while the inner core is solid. So the Earth's cross section from surface to core is approximately solid / liquid / solid / liquid / solid.

*dead

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