What Keeps the Earth Cooking?
If radioactive decay supplies only about half the Earth’s heat, what are the remaining sources of heat?


Mostly it is residual heat energy from when the Earth was very young. The biggest source came from the kinetic energy of all the bodies, big and small, that collided to form the Earth being converted to heat. The differentiation of the Earth added even more heat energy to the Earth.

In addition to radioactive decay, the on-going freezing of the outer core material onto to the inner core adds a bit more heat to the system, but neither one compensates for heat transported through the mantle and crust and then out into space. Note that this heating from below is but a tiny portion of the overall energy budget for the Earth's surface.

Even the Earth's surface was very hot shortly after the formation and differentiation of the Earth. While the surface cooled quickly (geologically speaking), the interior has not. The key reason is that 2,890 km of rock makes for a fairly thick blanket.