Where does Earth's heat come from?
551301
The interior of the Earth reaches temperatures of 5650 ± 600 kelvins [3] [4]. The planet's internal heat was originally generated during its accretion (see gravitational binding energy), and since then additional heat has continued to be generated by the decay of radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium. The heat flow from the interior to the surface is only 1/20,000 as great as the energy received from the Sun.
877741
Basically energy derived from steam or heat escaping from deep underground.  Kinda like harnessing "Old Faithful".\nHTH
219383
Nothing. Even geothermal energy (heat from the center of the Earth) originally came from the Sun.
352873
The Earth's temperature is due to more factors than fuel use. Ozone (O3) can be broken down, leading to weakness in the atmospheric layer of the Earth. Also, certain types of smog and smoke can create a barrier between the Sun and the Earth, trapping heat in the Earth atmosphere where it should radiate into the rest of the solar system. So, if the theory is true, using less fuel helps, but does not solve the problem.
1160653
Space near the earth is actually filled with a gas called the interplanetary medium (see first source). This gas, which is mostly gas coming from the sun, is quite hot, around 100,000 degrees C. But, it's also only 10^-18th the density of sea level air, so it carries very little heat.\n\nAir is relatively thick, so we're used to conduction and convection determining an objects temperature.  There's very little of either in space, so radiation dominates.  The sun's light is about twice as strong in space as it is on earth.  How hot this heats an object depends on the objects shape and color, but it's fair to say that most things will heat up to a few hundred degrees. \n\nBecause there's no air in space, everything looses heat very slowly, like being in a thermos. So, anything that produces heat, like a human body or machinery, will gradually warm up--space suits have built-in coolers to deal with this. \n\nIf you're out of the sunlight and have used up all your internal energy, you eventually cool down to about -25 to +25 C.  Infrared radiation from the earth is what prevents you from getting colder.  If you were also far away from the earth, you'd cool down to something between -240C and -270C.
162393
No one knows why the earth's center is hot. However, it is conjectured that tidal friction, heat from fission (radioactive decay), latent heat of formation and even the release of gravitational potential energy as heat, or possibly chemical processes might be reponsible for the heat, or at least some of it. \n\nOf course, eventually the radioactivity will decay away and that heat will cease. If the moon moves farther away as it is doing the tidal heating will lessen from the moon (but not the sun). The latent heat will dissipate. The chemical processes will probably eventually stop, and any gravitational potential energy release will end. \n\nSo it will probably cool down quite a bit eventually, except for tidal heating from the sun. This might take a long long time. \n\nHowever, it should be remembered that we do not really know what provides geothermal heating.
704301
the location where the magnosphere emits from the surface of the earth. the magnoshere envelopes the earth some 1000 miles out & protects us from the suns radiation
1090621
There are many different things inside the earth.\n\nThe heat caused by the extreme pressure makes it semi liquid.  The heavier metals tend to work there way to the center.  While the lighter elements stay closer to the surface. \n\n In short, there is molten rock and metal inside the earth.
44265
The starry night.  Heat from the surface of the earth can rise without clouds to keep it down.  It is called "radiational cooling.
678414
If you are talking about the sun's surface, then the earth's core is hotter than it, because the earth's core is 15,000 C while the sun's surface is 5,000 C only. But if you compare the earth's core with the sun's core, then the sun's core temperature is estimated to be 14,000,000 C - 15,000,000 C.
668088
it is a little of both. yes the earth has heated but weather goes in circular movement. so there are periods of time when the earth heats up and then cools down. yes we are polluting the air and are loosing ozone, but the biggest factor is from methane gas produced by farm animals. we (Christians) are suppose to be good Stewart's of Gods gifts to us. so we need to learn to recycle, conserve and use the planet wisely. one of the things that would help the most is just planting trees. have an cooling effect on earth.
19949
Thed center of the world is the very hot core of the earth. Not a country or a city.
123
You might not have intended it, but your question is a lot more complex than you might have thought.  It turns out that the temperature of the sun is a function of how deep into the sun you are, with the surface temperature being about 6000 Kelvins.  To make things even more complicated, the Corona of the sun (which extends in all directions around the sun beyond the surface) is actually 1,000,000 Kelvins.\n\nThis fact is well established, but further research is required to understand *why* there is such a huge difference in temperature between the two.\n\nNow for the second part of your question:\n\nThe light intensity of the sun drops off as the inverse square of your distance from the sun.  The "heat" is another thing entirely, because heat is defined as the average kinetic energy of particles, and photons don't count strictly in that definition.\n\nThere are particles that come from the sun in the form of solar wind, and around the region of the Earth, they have a "temperature" around 1000k.
814462
The sea, air, and land are all warmed by radiation (light, infrared, etc) from the sun during the day.  The earth also gives off radiation (infrared) all the time.  During the daytime the radiation from the sun is greater than the radiation given off by the earth's surface so the surface warms up.  At night, no radiation from the sun, but the earth is still radiating infrared, so it cools off.
218291
Lightning can heat nearby air up to even 10 times the temperature of the Sun's surface. Actually, the Sun's surface isn't so hot — some welding torches are hotter. ( The Sun's center, though, is 2500 times hotter: 15 million degrees Kelvin compared with 6 thousand degrees.)\n\nIt isn't the Sun's temperature, however, that accounts for the heat we feel on Earth. Rather, it's her size. The Sun has a surface area a hundred million billion times the surface area of a typical lightning bolt. We receive only 1 billionth of the Sun's energy. Even so, Earth gets much more energy from the Sun than from a lightning bolt over the same time period — a hundred million times more energy. \n\nOf course, close to the lightning strike, we can get blazing hot. Lightning striking a tree can set it afire. The distance to the target, however, must be small for us to feel the heat because lightning's radiant energy pales compared with the Sun
309151
Most of Earth's water condensed out of its early atmosphere, and that atmosphere came from world-wide volcanic eruptions. So, ultimately Earth's water resulted from volcanic activity, although much of it also comes from comets that entered our atmosphere.\n\nGod should be spelled B-I-G B-A-N-G\nPBrax@netscape.com
1086453
Hey all I have is my G.E.D. but I found this to be interesting:\n\nThe Earth as an infrared emitter\n\nThe Earth's surface and the clouds absorb visible and invisible radiation from the sun and re-emit much of the energy as infrared back to the atmosphere. Certain substances in the atmosphere, chiefly cloud droplets and water vapor, but also carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, and chlorofluorocarbons, absorb this infrared, and re-radiate it in all directions including back to Earth. Thus the greenhouse effect keeps the atmosphere and surface much warmer than if the infrared absorbers were absent from the atmosphere.