Can Earth or any spherical object in space act as a particle collider?

[adhd_wonderer]

This is most probably a dumb idea as I'm far from deep physics knowledge but I was thinking.
What if Earth is hot inside not because of the pressure and the radioactivity but because it's mass attracts particles (similarly to gravitational lensing) and they collide right in the Earth's center?

 

[phinds]

Why would they not collide with various parts of the Earth before getting anywhere near the center? You are positing some magical particles that can avoid all of the particles that make up the Earth, arrive at the center at the same time, and then collide with each other. Really?

 

[hutchphd]

What is "gravitational lensing" in ths context? Some nontrivial part of the earths internal energy is residual heat from collisions due to its viotent accretion history, because of gravity. Wikipedia is good.

 

[sophiecentaur]

What if Earth is hot inside not because of the pressure and the radioactivity but because it's mass attracts particles

This is exact.y the kind of question that (even brilliant) Scientists are constantly asking themselves. The answer (as in this case) is always to do with the actual numbers involved in each specific case. The temperature of the Earth's surface is the result of an equilibrium between all the radiated energy and all the energy contributions, such as solar energy, internally generated nuclear energy and the energy of present and past accretion.

The same calculations are made about Neutron Stars to account for the fact they are intense sources of very high energy radiation (Xrays). Accretion, in that case, accounts for the vast amounts of radiated energy where internal energy is not so much.

 

[PeroK]

This is most probably a dumb idea as I'm far from deep physics knowledge but I was thinking.
What if Earth is hot inside not because of the pressure and the radioactivity but because it's mass attracts particles (similarly to gravitational lensing) and they collide right in the Earth's center?

A better question is how we know that the centre of the Earth is hot in any case. No one has drilled down there to find out!

 

[Hill]

In addition to all the factors mentioned above, take in account that as you get closer to the center of the Earth or other spherically symmetric body, the gravitational attraction toward the center diminishes and completely disappears at the center.

 

[Dale]

This is most probably a dumb idea as I'm far from deep physics knowledge but I was thinking.
What if Earth is hot inside not because of the pressure and the radioactivity but because it's mass attracts particles (similarly to gravitational lensing) and they collide right in the Earth's center?

For a question like this the most important thing would be to show

1) there is a quantitative discrepancy between the measured temperature of the center of the earth and predictions based on known physics

2) that this new physics makes a quantitative prediction of the right amount to resolve the discrepancy

The big issue I see here is that the known physics has a lot of variability. We don’t know the initial conditions with high precision. We also don’t have direct measurements of the core temperature.

When you have a lot of uncertainty on both the theoretical and the experimental side then it becomes difficult to claim that there is even any discrepancy to resolve, or which direction any new physics would need to go to resolve it. Maybe the new physics needs to be a mechanism to take heat away, not add it.

I guess the point is, before looking for a fix, the first thing is to find something that needs fixing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And “broke” and “fix” are both about quantitative measurements in science.