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Earth cutaway from core to exosphere Geothermal drill machine in Wisconsin, USA. Temperature within Earth increases with depth. Highly viscous or partially molten rock at temperatures between 650 and 1,200 °C (1,200 and 2,200 °F) are found at the margins of tectonic plates, increasing the geothermal gradient in the vicinity, but only the outer core is postulated to exist in a molten or fluid ...
The geothermal gradient is established by the balance between heating through radioactive decay in the Earth's interior and heat loss from the surface of the earth. The geothermal gradient averages about 25 °C/km in the Earth's upper crust, but this varies widely by region, from a low of 5–10 °C/km within oceanic trenches and subduction ...
Outside of the seasonal variations, the geothermal gradient of temperatures through the crust is 25–30 °C (77–86 °F) per km of depth in most of the world. The conductive heat flux averages 0.1 MW/km 2. These values are much higher near tectonic plate boundaries where the crust is thinner.
A temperature gradient is a physical quantity that describes in which direction and at what rate the temperature changes the most rapidly around a particular location. The temperature spatial gradient is a vector quantity with dimension of temperature difference per unit length. The SI unit is kelvin per meter (K/m).
[1] [39] It works on the temperature variation of the earth crust over time based on rate of heat transfer and diffusion along the disturbed geothermal gradient (normal heat distribution in the ground). [1] [2] Thermal modeling does not give the actual geological time. [1] However, it provides accurate estimation of the duration of the thermal ...
These black smokers are of interest as they are in a more stable area of the Earth's crust, where tectonic forces are less and consequently fields of hydrothermal vents are less common. [19] The world's deepest known black smokers are located in the Cayman Trough, 5,000 m (3.1 miles) below the ocean's surface. [20]
Hydrothermal circulation in the oceans is the passage of the water through mid-oceanic ridge systems.. The term includes both the circulation of the well-known, high-temperature vent waters near the ridge crests, and the much-lower-temperature, diffuse flow of water through sediments and buried basalts further from the ridge crests. [3]
Consequently, old crust must be destroyed, so opposite a spreading center, there is usually a subduction zone: a trench where an ocean plate is sinking back into the mantle. This constant process of creating a new ocean crust and destroying the old ocean crust means that the oldest ocean crust on Earth today is only about 200 million years old ...