The mantle is about 2 900 kilometers 1 802 miles thick and makes up a whopping 84 of earth s total volume.
Why didnt granite sink down into eaths mantel.
The mantle lies between earth s dense super heated core and its thin outer layer the crust.
At the bottom of the mantle the material travels horizontally and is heated by the core.
The mantle is the mostly solid bulk of earth s interior.
Oceanic crust being so thin is a very small fraction of the earth about 0 1 percent but its life cycle serves to separate the contents of the upper mantle into a heavy residue and a lighter set of basaltic rocks.
They separate and sink down into the mantle leaving behind silica rich magma that has the right composition to form granite.
The mantle extends down to 2 890 km into the earth s surface temperatures that range from 500 to 900 degrees celsius in the upper portion to over 4 000 degrees celsius near the core boundary.
It reaches the location where warm mantle material rises and the mantle convection cell is complete.
It also extracts the so called incompatible elements which don t fit into mantle minerals and move into the liquid melt.
It eventually becomes cool and dense enough to sink back down into the mantle.
The earth has gas.
Unexpectedly helium hydrogen nitrogen and even carbon dioxide from microbes were found all along the borehole.