Earth's Engine Exposed

It's rare for me to have the time to create something the moment I get inspiration anymore, but I couldn't help but start on this the day I found out (thanks to one of Google's neat little home page animations) that it marked the 127th birthday of Inge Lehmann - a seismologist who had revealed from her studies the nature of the earth's deepest secret (literally) - the presence of an inner and outer core. I noticed that about a week ago, so this pic is late, but hey - it's not like the earth can be created in seven days

Interestingly, the iron inner core of the earth is said to be as hot as the surface of the sun, yet completely solid due to the pressure of the weight of everything above it even though it is way beyond melting temperature. The outer core however flows more like a liquid, the rotation of which contributes to the invisible yet valuable magnetic field that extends beyond the earth a lot further than the atmosphere does, as well as providing energy for a whole bunch of other geological events that both destroy and create. One could say the earth is only alive on the surface because it's alive on the inside. And that's why geology rocks

Creating this was a tough decision between choosing what seemed real and what seemed cool. I decided to go for cool (yet still at least accurate to the many diagrams I've seen of this stuff since I was a little kid) as such a clean-cut view of any planet is likely never to happen so in a way I went for something that better matched the simplicity of those diagrams seen on school projects the world over, only with an added sense of epicness to it

Artwork made and copyrighted by me. Please do not use or redistribute my images without permission