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Address for Correspondence
Anindya Goswami and Imran Habib Biswas
Department of Mathematics
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore 560 012, India.

C V R Murty

The Earth and its Interior

Long time ago, a large collection of material masses coalesced to form the Earth. Large amount of heat was generated by this fusion and slowly as the Earth cooled down, the heavier and denser materials sank to the center and the lighter ones rose to the top. The differentiated Earth consists of the Inner Core (radius ~1290km), the Outer Core (thickness ~2200km), the Mantle (thickness ~2900km) and the Crust (thickness ~5 to 40km). Figure 1 shows these layers. The Inner Core is solid and consists of heavy metals (e.g., nickel and iron), while the Crust consists of light materials (e.g., basalts and granites). The Outer Core is liquid in form and the Mantle has the ability to flow. At the Core, the temperature is estimated to be ~2500°C, the pressure ~4 million atmospheres and density ~13.5 gm/cc; this is in contrast to ~25°C, 1 atmosphere and 1.5 gm/cc on the surface of the Earth.

The Circulations

Convection currents develop in the viscous Mantle, because of prevailing high temperature and pressure gradients between the Crust and the Core, like the convective flow of water when heated in a beaker (Figure 2). The energy for the above circulations is derived from the heat produced from the incessant decay of radioactive elements in the rocks throughout the Earth's interior. These convection currents result in a circulation of the earth's mass; hot molten lava comes out and the cold rock mass goes into the Earth. The mass absorbed eventually melts under high temperature and pressure and becomes a part of the Mantle, only to come out again from another location, someday. Many such local circulations are taking place at different regions underneath the Earth's surface, leading to different portions of the Earth undergoing different directions of movements along the surface.