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Earth’s Layers Crust The crust, though, is made of rock that has cooled to a hard outer skin. The continental crust is the crust covered by land. This crust is light in color and is made mostly of granite. Beneath the ocean lies the oceanic crust. This crust is made of basalt. This crust covers more than two-thirds of the Earth. Crust is thinnest layer, It varies from 5km thick (in the ocean floor) to around 70km thick (on land where we live called the continental crust). Mantle. The mantle is much thicker than the crust at almost 3000km deep. It's made up of slightly different silicate rocks with more magnesium and iron. The tectonic plates are a combination of the crust and the outer mantle, also called the lithosphere. These plates move very slowly, around a couple of inches a year. Asthenosphere is hot molten, pliable rock that the lithospheric plate move on. The mantle of the earth is solid rock, but amazingly it can be molded, just like play dough. This certainly isn’t the type of play dough you’d want to play with; your fingers would burn as it’s so crazy, mad hot! Outer Core The Earth's outer core is made up of iron and nickel and is very hot (4400 to 5000+ degrees C). This is so hot that the iron and nickel metals are liquid! The outer core is very important to earth as it creates something called a magnetic field. Outer core is 2,266km deep Inner Core Earth's inner core is made up of iron and nickel. The inner core is the hottest part of the Earth, over 6,000 degrees C The inner core and the outer core of the Earth are as big as Mars! The inner core is kind of like a solid lead ball, which is about 2,400km thick. No wonder it’s like a solid lead ball! There’s heaps of pressure in the inner core, and that means it actually can’t melt. This is unbelievable!