Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The temperature increases by as much as 30 °C (54 °F) for every kilometer locally in the upper part of the crust. [3] Earth's thin, 40-kilometre (25-mile) deep crust—just one percent of Earth’s mass—contains all known life in the Universe. [4]
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 ...
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 20% of Earth’s radius or 70% of the Moon 's radius. [ 1][ 2] There are no samples of Earth's core accessible for direct measurement, as there are for Earth's mantle. [ 3]
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 ...
Earth's internal heat budget is fundamental to the thermal history of the Earth. The flow of 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 ...
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).
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/or electric power for millennia. Geothermal heating, using water from hot springs, for example, has been used for bathing since ...
The brittle-ductile transition zone (hereafter the "transition zone") is the zone of the Earth's crust that marks the transition from the upper, more brittle crust to the lower, more ductile crust. [1] For quartz and feldspar -rich rocks in continental crust, the transition zone occurs at an approximate depth of 20 km, [2] at temperatures of ...