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Earth’s atmosphere has a layered structure. From the ground toward the sky, the layers are the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Another layer, called the ionosphere, extends from the mesosphere to the exosphere. Beyond the exosphere is outer space.
The mantle is the mostly solid bulk of Earth’s interior. The mantle lies between Earth’s dense, superheated core and its thin outer layer, the crust. The mantle is about 2,900 kilometers (1,802 miles) thick, and makes up a whopping 84 percent of Earth’s total volume.
Earth's interior is generally divided into three major layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core. The hard, brittle crust extends from Earth's surface to the so-called Mohorovicic discontinuity, nicknamed the Moho.
Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and one percent other gases. These gases are found in atmospheric layers (troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere) defined by unique features such as temperature and pressure.
The ozone layer is one layer of the stratosphere, the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere. The stratosphere is the mass of protective gases clinging to our planet. The stratosphere gets its name because it is stratified, or layered: as elevation increases, the stratosphere gets warmer.
In plate tectonics, Earth’s outermost layer, or lithosphere —made up of the crust and upper mantle—is broken into large rocky plates. These plates lie on top of a partially molten layer of rock called the asthenosphere.
Our planet’s thin, 40-kilometer (25-mile) deep crust—just 1% of Earth’s mass—contains all known life in the universe. Earth has three layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core. The crust is made of solid rocks and minerals.
The lithosphere is the solid, outer part of Earth. The lithosphere includes the brittle upper portion of the mantle and the crust, the outermost layers of Earth’s structure. It is bounded by the atmosphere above and the asthenosphere (another part of the upper mantle) below.
The five systems of Earth (geosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere) interact to produce the environments we are familiar with.
There are many different types of plate boundaries. For example, sections of Earth’s crust can come together and collide (a “convergent” plate boundary), spread apart (a “divergent” plate boundary), or slide past one another (a “transform” plate boundary).