Earth and all its layers. Image: DepositPhotos
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Excerpted from Volcanoes Are Hot: Oliver’s Great Big Universe #2 by Jorge Cham. September 2024. Published with permission by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.
Earth is a lot like a boba tea drink.
You know those boba tea drinks they sell in some shops where they shake it, but when they give it to you all the different things in it have floated to a different spot in the cup? The ice floats to the top, then the bits of fruit float under that, and the boba balls all fall to the bottom?
Well, the same thing happened to Earth. Back when it was a big ball of lava billions of years ago, all the different things in it floated to a different level. The lighter rocks floated to the top, the heavier rocks floated just below that, and all the metal stuff sank to the bottom.
Earth is round, sort of, so when the heavy stuff sank, it went to the center of Earth, and when the lighter stuff floated, it went to the outer part of Earth.
That makes the inside of Earth look like what happens when you cut an avocado or a hard-boiled egg in half, and you can see all the layers.
I told my aunt someone should make an avocado and egg boba tea drink, and she said that definitely wouldn’t help my bathroom situation.
Then the second layer you have to dig through is called the mantle. This one is made of heavier rocks, and it’s pretty thick. You’d have to dig through 2,800 kilometers to get through it.
The mantle is where lava comes from. That’s where it gets formed as magma, before it shoots up through the cracks in the crust. If you’re ever digging through the mantle, you better hope you don’t accidentally dig into some magma.
Then after the mantle is Earth’s core. This is a big ball in the middle of the planet that’s mostly made of a metal called iron. The first 2,200 kilometers of it is called the outer core, and it’s oozy and melted, which means you can’t dig through it. And in the center is a solid metal ball called the inner core, which is 2,450 kilometers wide.
So if you tried to dig to the other side of the world, it would take you a long time, you might hit some magma, and you’d have to swim through liquid metal and cut through solid iron.
Not only that, my aunt said it’s SUPER HOT inside Earth. It’s still kind of hot from when Earth was a big ball of lava, AND there’s a lot of radioactive stuff inside Earth, which heats up the rock and metal.
Source : Popular Science