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Earth's crust is its thick outer shell of rock, referring to less than one percent of the planet's radius and volume. It is the top component of the lithosphere, a solidified division of Earth 's layers that includes the crust and the upper part of the mantle. [1] The lithosphere is broken into tectonic plates whose motion allows heat to escape ...
Geothermal gradient is the rate of change in temperature with respect to increasing depth in Earth 's interior. As a general rule, the crust temperature rises with depth due to the heat flow from the much hotter mantle; away from tectonic plate boundaries, temperature rises in about 25–30 °C/km (72–87 °F/mi) of depth near the surface in ...
Crust (geology) The internal structure of Earth. In geology, the crust is the outermost solid shell of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. It is usually distinguished from the underlying mantle by its chemical makeup; however, in the case of icy satellites, it may be distinguished based on its phase (solid crust vs. liquid mantle).
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust.
Earth's internal heat budget is fundamental to the thermal history of the Earth. The flow heat from Earth's interior to the surface is estimated at 47±2 terawatts (TW) [1] and comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat ...
For information about heat pumps used to extract heat from up to about 300 meters/yards from the surface, see ground source heat pump. Geothermal energy is thermal energy extracted from the Earth's crust. It combines energy from the formation of the planet and from radioactive decay. Geothermal energy has been exploited as a source of heat and ...
Earth's inner core is the innermost geologic layer of the planet Earth. It is primarily a solid ball with a radius of about 1,220 km (760 mi), which is about 19% of Earth's radius [0.7% of volume] or 70% of the Moon 's radius. [32][33] The inner core was discovered in 1936 by Inge Lehmann and is generally composed primarily of iron and some nickel.
The Earth's average surface absolute temperature for the 1961–1990 period has been derived by spatial interpolation of average observed near-surface air temperatures from over the land, oceans and sea ice regions, with a best estimate of 14 °C (57.2 °F). [44] The estimate is uncertain, but probably lies within 0.5 °C of the true value. [44]