Mantle (geology)
From the Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can change
Earth's mantle is the 2,900 km thick rocky shell making up about 70% of Earth's volume. It is mostly solid and lies over the Earth's iron-rich core, which takes up about 30% of Earth's volume. Past episodes of melting and volcanism at the outer levels of the mantle have produced a very thin crust of crystallized melt products near the surface, where we live. The gases evolved during the melting of Earth's mantle have a large effect on the composition and size of Earth's atmosphere.
On March 5, 2007, a team of scientists on board the RRS James Cook went on a voyage to an area of the Atlantic seafloor where the mantle has no crust covering. The anomaly is located mid-way between the Cape Verdes Islands and the Caribbean in the Atlantic Ocean. It lies about three kilometres under the ocean surface and covers thousands of square kilometres.[1][2]
[change] References
- ↑ Distance and location. www.msnbc.msn.com. Retrieved on 19 June 2008.
- ↑ About the Mantle. www.sciencedaily.com. Retrieved on 19 June 2008.
[change] Other websites
- The Biggest Dig : Japan builds a ship to drill to the earth's mantle - Scientific American Magazine (September 2005)
- Information on the Mohole Project
- Theory of the Earth

