The sources which provide knowledge about the interior of the earth may be classified into 2 sources:
Direct Sources of Earth’s Interior:
- Surface rock: Surface rock is readily available at the surface of the earth. By observing these rocks, we can know the form of material that can be found up to a certain depth.
- Volcanos :Volcanic material that gets out after an eruption is readily available to us for observation. These materials come up from great depth, therefore, the quality of this material at great depth can be analyzed directly. However, the accurate depth of material can’t be ascertain.
- Surface rock: Surface rock is readily available at the surface of the earth. Through observation these rocks, we can know the form of material that can be found up to a certain depth.
- Surface rock: Surface rock is readily available at the surface of the earth. By observing of these rocks, we can know the form of material that can be found up to a certain depth.
- Deep Ocean Drilling Project
- Integrated Ocean Drilling Project
- Mining Projects & Drilling Projects: Many materials could be sourced for analysis from Mining and Drilling areas. These materials reveal the nature of material available at a certain depth. From mining, it is easy to deduce that pressure and temperature increase from the surface towards the interior deeper depth.
Indirect Sources of Earth’s Interior:
- Seismic activities: It provides information what’s the state of the interior of the earth. It’s solid, liquid, or in gaseous form. The technology reveales that the mantle is liquid, the outer core is liquid but the inner core is solid.
- Meteorites : Meteorites are not from the interior of the earth; so, they has an indirect source to acquire the interior of the earth because scientists assume that Meteorites were once part of the planet, therefore, their structure and material is similar to the earth.
- Gravitation: Gravitational value is not the same across all the latitudes. The differences in gravitational value show the uneven distribution of mass of material within the earth.
- Magnetic field: Magnetic survey of the earth reveals the distribution of magnetic materials available in different parts of the earth
- Temperature and pressure variation.
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