Question For Geologists/scientists - Topic

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Jun 21 2012 09:56am

dno if any of you exist on jsp, but thought i'd try here regardless

and yes i understand the question is pretty fkn retarded, but curiosity got the better of me

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tardigrades (google if u got no clue) can withstand ~1200 atmospheric pressures, however some species can apparently withstand ~6000 atmospheric pressures (which is around 6x the pressure in the mariana's trench according to wiki)

whether or not this information is correct is irrelevant, and does not relate to the question at all

what i want to know that if this is indeed true, how far exactly into the earth would these creatures be able to exist? i'm assuming delving down into our planet would yield a non-linear graph of pressure to depth - hence why i'd have no fkn clue how far down it would be

anyone got an idea how this can be calculated? approximately how far down would this be? (i'm assuming it wouldn't reach the mantle, but would be somewhere in the crust... although i could be way off)

anyway... any help/suggestions in reaching an answer would be appreciated, cheers guys!

taekvideo

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Jun 21 2012 10:22am

There's a formula given here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090226164234AAJhSZL

I think even under the lightest areas of the crust it'd still be at least ~1 GPa.. or 10,200 atm
So no I don't think they could live in the mantle.

EndlessSky

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Jun 21 2012 11:08pm

pressure can be measured as a column of a single material based on its density. earth's density in 5.52 g/cm³, so you just convert 6000 atmospheres to the standard mmHg. then you convert mm to meter and Hg to earth.

from 6000atm, you get ~1800 meters of earth as the pressure assuming a solid column of 'earth', although it could probably survive at a greater depth because of frictional forces between particles of earth

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Jun 21 2012 11:09pm

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