The innermost planet of our solar system, Mercury, is barely wider than the continental United States, and is often seen as a ...

To understand the mantle—the largest layer of Earth’s rocky body—scientists ... you consider that the crust is roughly 9 to 12 miles thick on average. Luckily, that average contains outliers ...

It creates the Earth's magnetic field and is about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) thick. The next layer is the mantle. Many people think of this as lava, but it's actually rock. The rock is so hot ...

Beyond the outer core lies the mantle, a 1,800-mile-thick layer of viscous molten rock on which Earth's outermost layer, the crust, rests. On land, the continental crust is an average of 19 miles ...