Hi I saw your reply on a post about weird things people believe in (in terms of science) and you wrote about that unless one stands on a volcano, its solid rock down to the outer core and I had to google it because I was always taught that THE MANTLE IS LIQUID not by movies but by SCHOOL and now I learn it's a case of 'technically-' and I'm shaking so, uh, thanks.
Hello! Sorry I sat on this, I wanted to respond with this earth structure diagram I've been working on. I think most public schools in the US do a terrible job of teaching geology and it actually drives me insane lol. Also, if learning the mantle is not liquid blew your mind, then this is gonna blow your mind too...
The mantle is green!
This is a pretty quick and dirty diagram, but I wanted to show the earth in a way that we don't usually think about (usually it just looks "hotter" as you go toward the center). Here are some earth facts I wish everyone knew:
The Crust - relatively super thin, very brittle, mostly granite, and things get weird where the crust transitions to mantle and where plates collide (might make a second post on that).
The Mantle - primarily made up of a rock called peridotite, which has lots of olivine in it and is blasphemously green. Also the mantle is pretty much all rock, maybe a little magma here and there, but it's pretty minor. But because all that rock is really, really hot it can deform plastically and it actually undergoes convection (it moves!) Mantle upwelling (shown in that lighter green) is actually a huge driver of plate tectonics.
The Core - made of an iron and nickel alloy, the outer core is liquid (because it's so hot) and the inner core is solid (because the pressure is so high). This dual metallic core generates Earth's magnet field (our planet is one big magnet). We also suspect that inner core has Widmanstätten patterns, similar to those we find in meteorites.
So yeah, hoped you liked some more earth facts 😅
