Unveiling the Secrets: Journey to the Center of the Earth’s Structure

2023-10-14 08:12:00
Live Science The center of the Earth is located about 6,400 km below our feet. To put that in context, the deepest humans have ever drilled is 12.2 km, and it took geologists about 20 years to reach this limit. Fortunately, scientists do not have to drill inside our planet to study it, as they measure the seismic waves that travel through the Earth. Scientists have developed a solid understanding of its basic internal structure. What’s inside the Earth? Planet Earth generally consists of a crust, mantle (core), and core. The crust hosts all known life forms, but it is just the Earth’s outer shell, representing only 1% of the planet’s total volume. The mantle, or core, or middle layer, makes up 84% of the Earth’s volume, and the inner layer, the core, makes up the last 15%, according to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. CrustThe crust is divided into oceanic crust and continental crust. The thickness of the oceanic crust is 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) and is located under the oceans, while the thickness of the continental crust is up to 80 km (50 miles), according to the Seismin project at University College London. The oceanic crust is mostly composed of basalt rocks, which are It is denser than the continental crust, which is composed largely of granite. So when an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate, the denser oceanic crust moves beneath the continental crust, according to the Space website. This process takes a long time, but it eventually sends the oceanic crust into the mantle at a rate of 2 to 8 centimeters per year, according to the US Geological Survey. Liquid, but less solid than sinking oceanic crust. She added: “On the geological time scale, it looks almost like a liquid, even though it is a solid rock.” Park pointed out that the mantle consists of different minerals, but bridgmanite is likely the most abundant. This part of the Earth extends to a depth of about 2,900 meters. km (1,800 miles), according to the Sesmin project, and there is an upper mantle and a lower mantle. The Earth’s internal temperature rises between the boundaries of the upper mantle and the bottom of the lower mantle, and ranges from 1,000 to 3,700 degrees Celsius (1,800 to 6,700 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the “Space” website. Core. A 2,300 km (1,400 mi) thick sea of ​​molten iron and nickel marks the beginning of the Earth’s core. This liquid sea, known as the outer core, surrounds a mostly solid iron sphere — about 2,440 km (1,520 miles) across — called the inner core. The outer core of liquid iron orbits the inner core, giving Earth its magnetic field. Our planet formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and as it cooled, heavier elements like iron and nickel migrated inward to form the core. Park said that Earth’s interior is still cooling, and while that is happening, The inner core continues to form. According to Park: “Just as water turns into ice, iron solidifies and turns into an inner core, so the inner core actually grows.” She added that it grows more slowly than a human fingernail. The temperature of the inner core is about 5,200 degrees Celsius (9,400 degrees Fahrenheit), roughly equivalent to the temperature of the surface of the sun, but the enormous pressure keeps it mostly solid. Inside the inner core is the innermost core, a solid metal sphere 725 km (450 miles) across.
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