The Composition of the Earth: A Summary

Posted on June 15, 2011by Jennifer Ferreira

The reasons that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions take place depend on the nature of
the earths interior. This post will hopefully outline how the different elements of the
earth are arrange, and a bit about the different sections of structure of the earth too.

Layers of the Earth

The Core
The globe is made up of a core surrounded by concentric shells. The core itself
comprises nearly one third of the global mass. The inner core, 5,100-6,400km (3,169
3,977 miles) deep has a temperature of about 4,300oC/ It is apparently composed of
iron, kept in solid in spite of its heat by the tremendous pressures confining it.
The Outer Core
The surrounding outer core, 2,885-5,100km (1,793-3,170 miles) deep is also composed
largely of iron, but with some nickel and a few lighter elements. This outer core is fluid
and convection currents keep it in slow but constant motion. These currents and the
rotation of the globe make the outer core a self-exciting dynamo that has developed the
Earths magnetic field. The Earth is a dipole, i.e it has two magnetic poles, North and
South. During the planets history, however, the poles have, at different times, become
reversed. These magnetic reversals have been used to date rocks and have proved to be
vitally important in demonstrating the movement of crustal plates.
The Mantle
The outer core is enveloped by the mantle which comprises the lower mantle and the
upper mantle. The lower mantle is 2,235 (1,390 miles) thick and 650-2,885 km (4041,793 miles) deep. It is solid, hot and held under great pressure. Nevertheless, stresses
and strains and convection currents and creep have developed within it. Surrounding
the lower mantle is a shell about 500km (311 miles) thick, lying between 60-150km (3793 miles) and 650 km (404 miles) deep. This shell is composed of a transition zones and
the more plastic layers of the upper mantle. Together, they form the asthenosphere
(from the Greekasthenos meaning weak) which reacts to stresses and strains in a fluid
way, although it is only partly molten. Convection currents keep the asthenosphere in
slow, but continuous, motion and they are thus probably a major driving force behind
the movement of the plates across the Earths surface.

The Lithosphere
The outermost shell of the globe is the lithosphere (from the Greek lithos meaning
stone), which can be a s little as 60km (37miles) thick below the oceans, but can reach
as much as 150km (93 miles) thick beneath the continents. Like the other shells, the
lithosphere is divided into two layers: the lower layer is the solid upper mantle; the
upper, outermost layer is the Earths crust. The thickness of the crust varies from about
70m (43.5 miles) under the main mountain ranges to only 3km (1.75 miles) along the
crests of the mid-ocean ridges. It is an average of 40km (25 miles) thick on the
continents, where it is pale in colour, generally granitic in character, with a low density.
Under the oceans, on the other hands, it is dense, dark coloured, and basaltic, and
averages no more than 6km (3.75 miles) in thickness. This crust that seems so firm to us
is thin, brittle and fragile. It accounts for just one thousandth of the volume of the
globe. There is a constant interchange and interaction between the global shells and
especially between the outermost layers. The mains results are the growth, movement
and consumption of the global plates, and their most obvious manifestations are
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

MA RT I N J . S. RU DW ICK
392 pages | 90 halftones, 5 line drawings | 6 x 9 | 2014

Earth has been witness to mammoths and dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting
apart, comets and asteroids crashing catastrophically to the surface, as well as the birth of humans
who are curious to understand it all. But how was it discovered? How was the evidence for it
collected and interpreted? And what kinds of people have sought to reconstruct this past that no
human witnessed or recorded? In this sweeping and magisterial book, Martin J. S. Rudwick, the
premier historian of the earth sciences, tells the gripping human story of the gradual realization that
the Earths history has not only been unimaginably long but also

MARTIN J. S. RUDWICK
392 pages | 90 halftones, 5 line drawings | 6 x 9 | 2014

Earth has been witness to mammoths and dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart,
comets and asteroids crashing catastrophically to the surface, as well as the birth of humans who are curious to
understand it all. But how was it discovered? How was the evidence for it collected and interpreted? And what
kinds of people have sought to reconstruct this past that no human witnessed or recorded? In this sweeping and
magisterial book, Martin J. S. Rudwick, the premier historian of the earth sciences, tells the gripping human
story of the gradual realization that the Earths history has not only been unimaginably long but also
astonishingly eventful.
Rudwick begins in the seventeenth century with Archbishop James Ussher, who famously dated the creation of
the cosmos to 4004 BC. His narrative then turns to the crucial period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, when inquisitive intellectuals, who came to call themselves geologists, began to interpret rocks
and fossils, mountains and volcanoes, as natural archives of Earths history. He then shows how this geological
evidence was usedand is still being usedto reconstruct a history of the Earth that is as varied and
unpredictable as human history itself. Along the way, Rudwick defies the popular view of this story as a
conflict between science and religion and reveals that the modern scientific account of the Earths deep history
retains strong roots in Judaeo-Christian ideas.
Extensively illustrated, Earths Deep History is an engaging and impressive capstone to Rudwicks
distinguished career. Though the story of the Earth is inconceivable in length, Rudwick moves with grace
from the earliest imaginings of our planets deep past to todays scientific discoveries, proving that this is a tale
at once timeless and timely.
Earths Deep History tells the story, not of the earth itself that can be found in modern textbooks
but rather, the story of how natural philosophers developed the ideas of geology accepted today. . .
. This book is exhaustive in its survey of past geological and paleontological scholarship, and very
detailed, but eminently readable and engaging. . . . This is a fascinating story of the development of
this exciting branch of science.