P4_3 Shrinking the Earth

Abstract

This article investigates the energy requirements to compress the Earth to within 1 km. This was done using a model assuming the compression to be elastic, and another model estimating the energy to overcome the Coulomb repulsion between the constituent protons. The energies found were 3.1x10³² J and 8.3x10³⁸ J for each model respectively. It was also shown that to compress the Earth to within 1125 km you would have to overcome electron and neutron degeneracy pressure, and if compressed to a radius of 9 mm, the Earth would be a black hole.