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Earth has three layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core. The crust is made of solid rocks and minerals. Beneath the crust is the mantle, which is also mostly solid rocks and minerals, but punctuated by malleable areas of semi-solid magma. At the center of Earth is a hot, dense metal core.
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.
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 .
The biosphere is made up of the parts of Earth where life exists. The biosphere extends from the deepest root systems of trees to the dark environment of ocean trenches, to lush rain forests and high mountaintops.
The mantle is the mostly solid bulk of Earth's interior. The mantle lies between Earth's dense, super-heated 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.
Mountains, plains, and buttes (like these) are all landforms. A landform is a feature on Earth 's surface that is part of the terrain. Mountains, hills, plateaus, and plains are the four major types of landforms. Minor landforms include buttes, canyons, valleys, and basins.
The Earth’s crust is broken up into a series of massive sections called plates. These tectonic plates rest upon the convecting mantle, which causes them to move. The movements of these plates can account for noticeable geologic events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and more subtle yet sublime events, like the building of mountains.
Fold mountains are often associated with continental crust. They are created at convergent plate boundaries, sometimes called continental collision zones or compression zones. Convergent plate boundaries are sites of collisions, where tectonic plates crash into each other.
These fuels are found in Earth’s crust and contain carbon and hydrogen, which can be burned for energy. Coal, oil, and natural gas are examples of fossil fuels. Coal is a material usually found in sedimentary rock deposits where rock and dead plant and animal matter are piled up in layers.
Plate tectonics is driven by a variety of forces: dynamic movement in the mantle, dense oceanic crust interacting with the ductile asthenosphere, even the rotation of the planet. Geologists studying the Earth use scientific observation and evidence to construct a picture of what the Earth looked like at different periods in the geologic past.