A mantle is a layer inside a planetary body bounded below by a core and above by a crust. Mantles are made of rock or ices, and are generally the largest and most massive layer of the planetary body. Mantles are characteristic of planetary bodies that have undergone differentiation by density. All terrestrial planets (including Earth), half of the giant planets, specifically ice giants, a number of asteroids, and some planetary moons have mantles.

Examples

Earth

thumb|upright=1.5|The internal structure of Earth

The Earth's mantle is a layer of silicate rock between the crust and the outer core. Its mass of 4.01&nbsp;×&nbsp;10<sup>24</sup> kg is 67% of the mass of the Earth. It has a thickness of

Other planets

Mercury has a silicate mantle approximately thick, constituting only 28% of its mass.

Moons

Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede have silicate mantles; Io's ~ silicate mantle is overlain by a volcanic crust, Ganymede's ~ thick silicate mantle is overlain by ~ of ice, and Europa's ~ km silicate mantle is overlain by ~ of ice and possibly liquid water. The lunar mantle might be exposed in the South Pole-Aitken basin or the Crisium basin.

Asteroids

Some of the largest asteroids have mantles; for example, Vesta has a silicate mantle similar in composition to diogenite meteorites.

See also

  • Earth's internal heat budget
  • Lehmann discontinuity
  • Mantle xenoliths
  • Mantle convection
  • Mesosphere (mantle)
  • Numerical modeling (geology)
  • Primitive mantle

References

Further reading

  • Don L. Anderson, Theory of the Earth, Blackwell (1989), is a textbook dealing with the Earth's interior and is now available on the web. Retrieved 2007-12-23.
  • Nixon, Peter H. (1987). Mantle xenoliths: J. Wiley & Sons, 844p., ().
  • Donald L. Turcotte and Gerald Schubert, Geodynamics, Cambridge University Press, Third Edition (2014), (Hardback) (Paperback)
  • The Biggest Dig: Japan builds a ship to drill to the earth's mantle – Scientific American (September 2005) (archived 17 October 2007)
  • Information on the Mohole Project (archived 2 November 2015)