Earthmagination

Earth is the third planet at 149.6m km from the Sun, and the only astronomical object known thus far to harbour and support life. 29.2% of Earth's surface of 510.1m km2 is land about 148.9m km2 consisting of continents and islands.

Imagine; first, there's the Earth's crust, the thinnest of three main layers, yet humans have never drilled all the way through it, as depth increases into the Earth, temperature and pressure rise. Temperatures in the crust increase about 15°C per/km, making it impossible for humans to exist at depths greater than several kilometers, even if it was somehow possible to keep shafts open in spite of the tremendous heat and pressure.

Second, there’s the mantle that makes up a whopping 84% of the planet's volume. Followed by the dense inner core, a sphere of solid iron, while the outer core consisting of molten iron thousands of kilometers thick, where there's near-zero gravity.

In terms of Earth’s 6,371km depth below the surface (radius), the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 in Russia retains the world record at 12.262Km reached back in 1989, around 1,300m deeper than the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, and is still the deepest artificial point.

Earth's core is a key component of the planet, helping to give rise to the magnetic field that protects us from harmful space radiation, but its remoteness from the planet's surface means that there is much we don't know about what goes on down there.

Supposedly, earth has a very hot molten iron core, which, if cooled down, the planet would grow cold and dead. Cooling also could cost us the magnetic shield around the planet created by heat from the core. This shield protects Earth from cosmic radiation.

Theories on the formation of Earth suggest that the inner core is composed of iron and nickel heated up to extraordinary scorching temperature levels, estimated between 4,000–4,700°C.

The inner core of the Earth may be melting, scientists now find. The slow cooling of our planet causes the molten iron in the outer core to flow and swirl fast as heat is transported to the mantle.

With such heavy inner core, the earth's orbit and rotation will remain stable over the long term, giving us day and night and summer and winter. ... The intense heat of the inner core is keeping the outer core a dense liquid that contains convection currents due to the heat, and they are directed by the earth's spin.

According to reports recently published in the online journal 'Nature Geoscience', the solid inner core is losing heat more rapidly beneath Indonesia than it is under Brazil, and that's messing with seismic waves passing through it to create a sort of “lopsided“ growth pattern.

Hypothesis has it that on average, the inner core's radius grows evenly by about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) every year. Gravity corrects for the lopsided growth in the east by pushing new crystals toward the west. There, the crystals clump into lattice structures that stretch along the core's north-south axis.

Probability has it that Earth's formation captured a lot of heat within the planet. The loss of this heat, and heating by ongoing radioactive decay, have since driven our planet's evolution. Heat loss in Earth's interior drives the vigorous flow in the liquid iron outer core, which creates Earth's magnetic field.

Purportedly, in order for the inner core to grow, it must transfer its heat — some residual from Earth's formation, some radioactive from decaying elements — to each successive layer. ... This temperature gradient allows the deeper layers to shed their heat, thereby solidifying the inner core.

Fact is at room temperature, the iron atoms are in an unusual loosely packed open arrangement; as iron is heated past 912°C, the atoms become more closely packed before loosening again at 1,394°C and ultimately melting at 1,538°C.

All metals expand when heated, the kinetic energy of that material increases and its atoms and molecules move about more. This means that each atom will take up more space due to its movement so the material will expand. Results are for your imagination…

Food for thought!