What is the minimum thickness of crust under the ocean
Answers
Answer:
The average thickness of the crust is 35 km below continents, 6 km below oceans (plus 5 km of sea water). The maximum thickness of the crust is about 90 km, below the Himalayas.
Explanation:
Answer:
There are two different types of Earth's crust:
Oceanic: 5 km (3 mi) to 10 km (6 mi) thick and largely made up of heavier, more mafic rocks such as gabbro, diabase, and basalt.
Continental: Between 20 and 50 km thick, primarily made up of less dense, more felsic rocks like granite.
Explanation:
The thin outer layer of the planet, known as the crust, makes up less than 1% of its total volume. It is the uppermost part of the lithosphere, a division of the Earth's layers that also contains the crust and the upper mantle. Heat can escape from the interior of the Earth into space through the tectonic plates that make up the lithosphere.
COMPOSITION:
Due to the upper mantle's composition of peridotite, which makes it substantially denser than the crust, this structure of the mantle on top of the crust remains stable. The Mohorovii discontinuity, a border indicated by a difference in seismic velocity, is where the boundary between the crust and mantle is typically located. The crust is roughly 15 km thick on average.
CONTINENTAL CRUST & OCEANIC CRUST:
The crust is typically between 15 km (9 mi) and 20 km thick (12 mi). Both continental and oceanic crust "float" on the mantle because they are both less dense than the mantle underneath them. The thickness of the continental crust is normally 40 km (25 miles), whereas the thickness of the oceanic crust is only 6 km (4 miles).