Molten mass, located under the earth's crust. The structure of the Earth. Riddles of the planet Earth

As Ilya Druzhinin said, Earth is a planet that is filled with unusual inhabitants: humans and animals, various creatures. Beautiful throughout the globe, good bright continents. Nature has done something amazing and enchanting for the life of each of us. That's why it needs to be preserved and ecologically protected from all bad.

The amazing is always mysterious

Planet Earth, perhaps, is still the biggest and unsolved mystery for each of us. The study of the Earth's structure is still, despite technological progress, a problematic process. Despite the fact that many facts about the Earth today are known, this is only a small fraction of what is to be known to mankind. Today we will talk about what our planet is made of, and what secrets we have not yet guessed. Today we will find out what the molten mass under the earth's crust is, what layers the planet is made of, and what mysteries it hides from us.

What layers does the Earth consist of?

Scientists have long established that the Earth consists of three main layers - the crust, mantle and core. About 4.6 billion years ago, internal stratification began, which continues to this day. At the moment when the bundle is over, 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 the continental and oceanic crust, different in thickness and composition. The Earth's crust belongs to the lithosphere.

Mantle . It is separated from the earth's crust by the so-called Mohorovicic boundary (or Moho boundary), which is characterized by a sharp increase in seismic waves at a certain depth. Lower layers of the mantle cover the core of the Earth. It occupies 83% of the planet's volume and is close in composition with stone meteorites.

At present, the mantle is divided into upper and lower. Part of its upper layer, the molten mass under the earth's crust, is 80 km, with which the solids fall to the center of the planet. The entire layer of the upper mantle is 600 km, and the lower layer, lying on the earth's core, is 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 internal one. 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 core that creates the magnetic field of the planet and protects the planet from cosmic rays. At the same time, we know about the nucleus negligible - we can only build hypotheses and assume.

Asthenosphere - what is it?

The asthenosphere is a layer under the lithosphere that forms the earth's crust. If the lithosphere is called a solid layer of the planet, then the asthenosphere is a molten mass located beneath the earth's crust. Plastic and less dense, it is able to cross the Moho boundary. It is a source of volcanism, inserting foci of magma into the earth's crust or even pouring out onto the surface of the planet. Its temperature is 1200 degrees.

Volcanoes - the source of death

Volcanoes are scattered almost all over the globe. During their eruption, their destructive effect on the environment is exerted by volcanic magma (from ancient Greek "thick mud"). It is a molten mass that is under the earth's crust or directly in it. Rising to the surface, magma freezes, turning into igneous rocks.

What is magma?

Typically, magma has a silicate nature and an entire periodic table in its composition, but there are also alkaline-carbonate or sulphide melts in nature, which differ in their shade and high speed of movement. For example, the African volcano Al-Doin'e-Lengai has a 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 ground, it no longer fits in them and breaks out. Usually this happens cyclically, which helps scientists predict the time of a new eruption.

Sometimes the temperature inside the magma chamber decreases, magma crystallizes, sinking to one. In this case, lighter elements rise up, lifting the "cover" of the underground chamber, which eventually breaks down.

In some cases, hot magma is mixed with other elements, the voltage is again torn off the chamber cover ... The result is always one - the eruption of the volcano.

Molten mass, which is under the earth's crust, was called lava during the eruption. In fact, it is the same magma, only deprived of oxygen due to the release to the surface.

This mysterious Earth ...

Mankind is constantly confronted with incidents that generate many questions, reliable answers to which we will hardly ever find out. With the growth of technological progress it seems that we know enough about our world, but in fact we do not know about it practically anything. So, the riddles of the planet, which still excite scientists ...

Tectonic processes. Geologists to this day can not answer the question 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 rare zircons found speak about the breed from which our planet was composed more than 4 billion years ago. By the way, the present age of our Earth is also 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 unexplored - to this day people find various sea monsters thrown ashore by waves from the very abyss of the ocean. Many of their species are considered extinct, others are generally not known. But the question of where so much water has come from on Earth remains open. After all, researchers believe that the planet was originally a rocky desert. Where did 70% of the planet subsequently become covered with water?

Core. Initially, it was thought that the core consists of the heaviest substances, presumably from iron, because its shortage was observed in the lithosphere. Obviously, the heaviest metals fall down, scientists believed. However, in the 1950s it became known that the core has a small weight. 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 moans, coming from the depths. Hell or physics?

Riddles of the planet Earth are nature. In every country, on every continent, there are natural phenomena that puzzle the great minds of mankind up to now. So, in the Chinese province there is a waterfall of Shaanxi, 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 Valley of Death in the United States people for hundreds of thousands of years watching independently moving stones and boulders of enormous sizes. They even managed to shoot on video a few years ago.

Conclusion

This is not all the riddles of the planet Earth, it is not possible to fit them into one article. Scientists are still struggling with answers to multiple questions. Do we ever find the answers to them - it is unknown.