I wonder if any of you have been guessing each day, what the “next” day’s post might be. Yesterday, I talked about woodchucks, and at the end, I gave a list of famous people named “Charles” or Chuck. I bet some of you thought I might write about one of them today, like Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin, or Charles Schultz. But no.
Instead, I was thinking about how groundhogs or woodchuck burrow as they do. They are simply underground architects, with their burrow systems extending between 50 to 100 feet in length. Most of the time, they don’t go any deeper than 6 feet below the surface.
But what are they digging into?
Well, our Earth is divided into layers. While we can’t see deep into the Earth, geologists have a variety of neat tricks to create a picture of our Earth’s layers. It is kind of like a kid’s jawbreaker. Earth consists of layers that differ in composition and generally get hotter and higher in pressure as you move toward the center of the planet.
The layers of Earth are:
Crust – 3 to 45 miles deep
Mantle – 1800 miles thick
Outer Core – 1470 miles thick
Inner Core – 1500 miles thick
In case you were wondering, the diameter of the Earth is 7,917.5 miles at the middle.
So then. What exactly are the layers of the Earth?
Let’s start with the total composition. The Earth is mostly made of rock and metal. But nobody knows 100% for sure. Scientists can’t exactly get into some diving spaceship and head right to the middle of the Earth. Although, it would be neat. But because we can’t really get inside, it’s difficult to know exactly what’s there.
So yes, we stand on the crust. That is where the woodchucks burrow and where we do all of our digging. It is between 3 and 45 miles deep. All life exists on the Earth’s surface, including us, animals, mountains, sea, and soil.
In the ocean, it is about five miles thick. This is called the oceanic crust, and it consists of basalt rock.
Then there’s the continental crust which is covered by land and is made mostly out of granite. Above that granite is a sedimentary rock. It is 45 miles thick.
The crust is the only layer on Earth that scientists can study, as they can drill into it. So this is the layer that we know the most about.
Next is the mantle. That 1800 miles of thickness makes up about 85% of the Earth’s weight.
It is made of molten or melted iron, minerals, and other semi-solid rocks that will still flow under pressure.
Scientists have tried to study this more extensively. They first tried to explore it back in 1996. But they failed somehow. Then, in 2007, they drilled four miles below the seabed from a ship. This drill was three times deeper than any other drill that they’d used before. So they found out a little bit about the mantle’s makeup. Molten cocktail, really.
And then there is the core. Outer. Then Inner.
The outer core is made of liquid iron and nickel. Again, it is 1470 miles thick.
The Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and when this happened, all the heavy materials sunk to the middle, and this became the inner core.
The inner core is kind of like a solid lead ball, which is about 1500 miles thick. There is a whole big lot of pressure in the inner core, and that means it actually can’t melt. You’d think it could melt. The temperature in the inner core is up to 13,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s seriously hot. In fact, our core is as hot as the surface of the sun.
The inner core apparently spins at a different speed to the rest of the planet, and this causes the Earth’s magnetic field. It is because of the flow of metals in the inner core that the Earth is magnetic. Of course, that magnetic field spreads way beyond the Earth and goes off far into space.
I don’t know how the scientists know all this. But they seem to say it as fact.
So, what lies beneath? Hot rocks, mostly.
Which means that we rock.
Rocks rock.
Rock and roll.
Rock bottom.
Between a rock and a hard place.
For the rest of the day? Rock on, my friends. Rock on.
“””””””””””””””””””””””
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
~ Thomas Jefferson
“””””””””””””””””””””””
Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
“””””””””””””””””””””””
We’re all humans living on this tiny little rock, floating through space at, like, thousands of miles an hour. We should all just get along.
~ Finn Balor
“””””””””””””””””””””””
Rocky. Not the movie. Rockies beneath your feet.
