4 ms·

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by ars 2y ago

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images-archive-read-only/wp-content/uploads/sites/567/2015/09/21153205/800px-Earth-crust-cutaway-english.svg_.png 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".

dredmorbius 2y ago
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_elements#Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...>