KOMPAS.com – Have you ever wondered what is actually inside the Earth?
As an illustration, the center of the Earth itself is almost 6,400 kilometers below our feet. For comparison, the deepest drilling ever carried out by humans is 12.2 km deep.
To reach that depth, geologists even need almost 20 years, so it is not an easy matter to find out the answer to what is inside the Earth.
Luckily, scientists don’t need to dig deep into the planet to find out what’s inside the Earth.
By measuring seismic waves passing through the Earth, researchers have developed a strong understanding of the basic internal structure of the planet we live on.
Also read: Researchers suspect that the Earth’s inner core is actually soft
In the core of Planet Earth
Quoted from Live Science, Tuesday (10/10/2023) the layers of the Earth broadly consist of the crust, mantle and core.
The Earth’s crust, the outer layer of Planet Earth, houses all known life. However, the Earth’s crust is only the outermost layer of the Earth and only accounts for 1 percent of the planet’s total volume.
The mantle, or middle layer, makes up 84 percent of the Earth’s volume. And the deepest layer, namely the core, makes up the remaining 15 percent.
The earth’s crust is divided into oceanic crust and continental crust. Oceanic crust is 5 to 10 Kilometers thick and lies beneath the ocean.
Meanwhile, continental crust is up to 80 kilometers thick.
The oceanic crust on the surface of the Earth is mostly basalt rock, and is denser than the continental crust, which is mostly granite.
Also read: The Earth’s Inner Core Cools Faster, What’s the Impact?
SHUTTERSTOCK/Rost9
Illustration of the Earth’s core. The study found that a rare type of helium gas, helium-3, is known to have leaked from the bowels of the Earth. This very rare gas is believed to have been created right after the Big Bang.
So when an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate, the denser oceanic crust moves beneath the continental crust.
This process takes a long time but ultimately lowers oceanic crust into the mantle at a rate of 2 to 8 cm per year.
The Earth’s mantle is not molten but not as hard as the submerged oceanic crust.
“On geological time scales, the mantle almost acts like a fluid even though it is solid rock,” said Sunyoung Park, an assistant professor who studies Earth’s internal structure at the University of Chicago.
The mantle consists of various minerals and has a depth of around 2,900 km and is divided into upper and lower mantle.
The Earth’s internal temperature increases between the boundary of the upper mantle and the bottom of the lower mantle, ranging from 1000 to 3700 degrees Celsius.
Also read: The Mystery of Changes in the Rotation of the Earth’s Core, What’s the Analysis Like?
A sea of molten iron and nickel as thick as 2,300 Km marked the beginning of the formation of the Earth’s core.
A sea of liquid iron and nickel known as the outer core surrounds a mostly solid ball of iron called the inner core.
The liquid iron outer core also rotates around the inner core and provides a magnetic field for the Earth.
Our planet formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and as it cooled, heavier elements such as iron and nickel migrated inward to form the core.
The Earth’s interior is still cooling, and as it does so, the Earth’s core continues to form.
“Just like water turns into ice, iron solidifies and becomes the inner core, so the inner core actually expands,” said Park.
Meanwhile, the inner core has a temperature of around 5,200 degrees Celsius or approximately the same temperature as the surface of the sun. But the tremendous pressure keeps most of the core solid.
While inside the inner core is the innermost core, a dense ball of metal 725 km wide.
Also read: The Mystery of the Tilting of the Earth’s Core and the Reduced Heat of the Planet Below Indonesia
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2023-10-12 01:00:00
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