As Ilya Druzhinin said, the Earth is a planet that is filled with unusual inhabitants: people and animals, various creatures. Beautiful around the globe, good bright continents. Nature has done something amazing and enchanting for the life of each of us. That is why it must be preserved and environmentally protected from all bad.
The amazing is always mysterious
Planet Earth, perhaps, is still the biggest and unsolved mystery for each of us. Studying the structure of the Earth still, despite technological progress, remains a problematic process. Despite the fact that many facts about the Earth are known today, this is only a fraction of what humanity has to learn. Today we’ll talk about what our planet consists of and what secrets we have still not solved. Today we will find out what the molten mass is located under the earth’s crust, what layers the planet consists of, and what riddles it hides from us.
What layers does the earth consist of?
Scientists have long established that the Earth consists of three main layers - this is the crust, mantle and core. About 4.6 billion years ago, internal stratification began, which continues to this day. At the moment when the stratification ends, our Earth will turn into a cold, dead body.
3 main components
Earth's crust. The thinnest layer of the Earth, the thickness of which can vary from 5 to 75 km. This is a fragile, thin and hard layer, which includes about 90 elements. Geologists distinguish between continental and oceanic crust, different in thickness and composition. The crust belongs to the lithosphere.
The mantle . It is separated from the earth's crust by the so-called Mokhorovichich border (or the Moho border), which is characterized by a sharp increase in seismic waves at a certain depth. The lower layers of the mantle cover the core of the earth. It occupies 83% of the planet’s volume and is similar in composition to stone meteorites.
Currently, the mantle is divided into upper and lower. Part of its upper layer, molten mass under the earth's crust, is 80 km, with the help of which solids descend to the center of the planet. The entire layer of the upper mantle is 600 km, and the lower, lying on the earth's core - 2900 km. The deeper the mantle is, the higher its temperature and pressure.
The inner core of the Earth is the central part of the globe, whose diameter is approximately 3,500 km. Its temperature reaches 4000 degrees.
The power of the outer core is higher than the inner. The outer core is in a molten state, while the inner core is composed of solids, as scientists previously believed and still write in textbooks. It is the solid part of the nucleus that creates the magnetic field of the planet and protects the planet from cosmic rays. Moreover, we know very little about the core - we can only hypothesize and assume.
Asthenosphere - what is it?
The asthenosphere is a layer located under the lithosphere, forming the earth's crust. If the lithosphere is called the solid layer of the planet, then the asthenosphere is a molten mass located under the earth's crust. Plastic and less dense, it is able to cross the Moho border. It is a source of volcanism, introducing foci of magma into the earth's crust or even pouring out onto the surface of the planet. Its temperature is 1200 degrees.
Volcanoes are the source of death
Volcanoes are scattered across almost the entire globe. When they erupt, their destructive effect on the environment is exerted by volcanic magma (from the ancient Greek "thick mud"). This is a molten mass located under the earth's crust or directly in it. Rising to the surface, magma freezes, turning into magmatic rocks.
What is magma?
Usually magma has a silicate nature and a whole periodic table in its composition, but alkaline-carbonate or sulfide melts are also found in nature, which differ in a different shade and high speed of movement. For example, the African volcano Ol Doinje Lengai has black lava, considered the coldest on Earth.
Magma enters the underground reservoirs of the earth's crust due to the movement of tectonic plates. Filling these tanks to the base, it no longer fits in them and breaks out. This usually happens in cycles, which helps scientists predict the time of a new eruption.
Sometimes the temperature inside the magma chamber decreases, magma crystallizes, dropping by one. In this case, the lighter elements rise up, lifting the “cover” of the underground chamber, which breaks down over time.
In some cases, red-hot magma mixes with other elements, and again tears off the chamber lid from voltage ... The result is always the same - a volcanic eruption.
The molten mass located under the earth's crust, during the eruption, was called lava. In fact, this is the same magma, only deprived of oxygen due to release to the surface.
This mysterious Earth ...
Humanity is constantly confronted with incidents that give rise to many questions, the reliable answers to which we are unlikely to ever know. With the growth of technological progress, it seems that we know enough about our world, but in fact we know almost nothing about it. So, the mysteries of the planet that still concern scientists ...
Tectonic processes. To this day, geologists cannot answer the question of when the tectonic “motor” process began. The original traces of this activity have long been erased, and it is impossible to restore the model. Only the rare zircons found speak of the rock that our planet consisted of more than 4 billion years ago. By the way, the present age of our Earth also remains a mystery, and although scientists believe that it is about 5 billion years old, this remains only an assumption.
Oceans of the Earth. About 95% of the depths of the oceans still remain uncharted - to this day people find various sea monsters thrown ashore in waves from the very depths of the ocean. Many of their species are considered extinct; nothing is known about others. But the question of where so much water came from on Earth remains open. After all, researchers are sure that initially the planet was a rocky desert. Where did subsequently 70% of the planet are covered with water?
Nucleus. Initially, it was believed that the core consisted of the heaviest substances, presumably of iron, since its shortage was observed in the lithosphere. Obviously, the heaviest metals go down, scientists thought. However, in the 1950s it became known that the core is lightweight. What is in the center of the planet? During the drilling of the earth’s crust in Russia, people came across strange creatures that appeared on the surface, “living” moving stones and groans from the depths. Hell or physics?
Riddles of the planet Earth - nature. In every country, on every continent, there are natural phenomena that have puzzled the great minds of mankind so far. So, in the Chinese province there is a Shaanxi waterfall, which does not freeze even in the most severe frost. But at the same time every 25 years, in the summer, its surface is covered with a crust of ice. In the Death Valley in the United States, for hundreds of thousands of years, people have been observing independently moving stones and boulders of enormous size. They even managed to be filmed a few years ago.
Conclusion
This is far from all the mysteries of planet Earth; it is not possible to fit them into one article. Scientists are still struggling with answers to multiple questions. Whether we will ever find answers to them is unknown.