Re:All of Earth's water in a single sphere
by zamadatix on Tuesday August 13, 2024 @05:42PM
(#41240155)
I don't buy it. Even allowing counting iron as separate from what rocks can be composed of (and using mass instead of volume) you still have 30.1%+15.1%=45.2% of the Earth as oxygen and silicon (which are most certainly part of what makes a rock) at which point you've already disproved the claim Earth is more a ball of iron than a ball of rock.
A ball of iron covered with a ball of rocks is a more fair statement though, and I'd agree with that. It's just that center ball isn't most of what makes up the Earth (by any measure).
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images-archive-re...
Everything up to and including the mantle is either iron or has a lot of iron. But to your point the mantle also has a lot of silica. So I guess it depends on your definition of "mostly".
Re:All of Earth's water in a single sphere
by dredmorbius on Tuesday August 13, 2024 @06:40PM
(#41240599)
Mass is the defining characteristic of a quantity of matter. Given that much of the iron is under far higher compression than the outer layers of silicate rock, this also advantages iron.
By mass, iron (32.1%) is still a minority constituent of the Earth.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...>
It's a ball of iron covered with rocks (i.e. metal oxides) cover with water (i.e. hydrogen oxide).