How Deep You Could Dig on Different Planets

[Music] well lookie here you're about to figure out what lies under the surface of each planet in the solar system get into your spaceship equipped with the largest drill you can only imagine and off you go you start with mercury it's the closest planet to the sun at first sight the place looks similar to our good old moon but after landing you understand it's an illusion all around your spaceship there are craters left by meteorites the planet's surface is littered with huge steep hills some of them are two miles high and stretch for hundreds of miles you start drilling and immediately understand it's going to be tough mercury is the second densest planet in the solar system topped only by earth the planet's outer shell is 250 miles of solid crust and rocky mantle after getting through it you see mercury's metallic core it takes up almost 85 percent of the planet's volume and contains more iron than any other planet we know about you don't need to drill anymore the outer core is liquid but once you reach the solid inner core you have to switch that drill on again the next planet you're going to explore is venus it's the hottest planet in the solar system the average temperatures there are high enough to melt lead the pressure on the planet is 90 times greater than that on earth your spacecraft is traveling through thick clouds of sulfuric acid venus surface is reddish brown and extremely dry you land in the middle of a flat smooth plane planes like this cover two thirds of the planet's surface well you get down to work the drill starts moving through the crust it consists mostly of basalt and is almost 12 miles wide the next layer is a molten rocky mantle after some time you get the feeling it'll never end no wonder it's 1200 miles thick finally you arrive at the planet's metallic iron core it's huge twice wider than the mantle see that blue sphere slightly to the left it's earth how about you skip it for the moment and get back to it later right now mars sounds so much more exciting the place is freezing cold the temperature is minus 80 degrees fahrenheit the planet looks reddish and as soon as you make your first step on its surface it becomes clear why the ground is covered with rusty colored dust its fine particles are also floating in the air around you in most places that dust layer is seven feet thick you start drilling through the planet's thin crust it's made up of volcanic basalt rock pretty soon you reach the mantle it's composed of oxygen silicates and other minerals something like a soft rocky toothpaste the red planet's mantel is much thinner than earth's it's 1100 miles thick at most you feel that the drill begins to move a bit differently ah must be the core it's made mostly of iron nickel and sulfur and is between 900 and 1200 miles across and unlike earth's core it doesn't move time to visit the largest planet of the solar system jupiter almost 1300 earths could fit into this huge thing it's also alarmingly hot about 43 000 degrees at the core but you can't land on jupiter because it doesn't have any solid surface the planet is a gas giant the key word here being gas your drill is also of no use at least at first while descending you watch thick brown yellow red and white clouds passing by thanks to them the planet looks colorful and beautifully striped you keep going deeper toward the center of the planet its atmosphere is made up of hydrogen and helium gas soon you see the hydrogen become liquid under immense atmospheric pressure and closer to the core this liquid turns into a mixture of metallic hydrogen and helium you reach something that looks like a core but even with the help of your equipment you can't figure out whether it's a molten ball of liquid or a solid rock 14 to 18 times the mass of earth maybe one day astronomers will help you answer this question the next planet turns out to be exceptionally windy like me the winds on saturn travel at more than 1100 miles per hour at the equator from above it looks as if the gas giant has a solid yellowish brown surface you get through several different layers of clouds and suddenly you realize you can't land your spacecraft here as well saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system it has only 1 8 the average earth's density if you found a pool of water large enough to fit the ringed planet the gas giant would flow if you kept going down you'd probably have found saturn's core it's likely to be rocky with hydrogen and helium surrounding it ah you're approaching the ice giant uranus which means there's going to be some surface to land on or not the planet isn't solid you fly through the upper atmosphere and sink into the liquid icy center the ice which makes up 80 percent of the planet's mass is actually a hot dense fluid it consists of water ammonia ice and methane this part of the planet is sometimes called a water ammonia ocean this ice surrounds a solid rocky core that's where you can finally use your drill the course small half the earth's mass compared to other planets it's also rather cool a mere 9 000 degrees you're reaching the farthest point of your journey neptune it's four times the size of earth but 17 times as heavy the bluish surface you see when coming closer is a layer of permanent clouds and swirling gas below this surface there's a large mantle liquid and red hot the mantle is rich in methane ammonia and water and equals 15 earth's masses at last you have something to drill the planet's core is solid it consists mostly of iron and other metals keep drilling until you're at a depth of 4500 miles astronomers are almost sure that's where you'll find a diamond layer that's right it rains diamond crystals there well time to go back home people have drilled pretty deep holes here but they were never deep enough to even get through the crust after the drills traveled one third of the way the temperature reached 360 degrees and the equipment couldn't operate any longer but your drill is much stronger than that that's why you easily move through the crust it takes up only one percent of earth's volume and is broken into tectonic plates they let heat escape from the earth's interior you reach the mantle this layer is about 1800 miles thick and makes nearly 84 percent of the planet's volume it consists of silicate rocks rich in iron and magnesium well you don't need to drill anymore the 1500 mile thick outer core is liquid it consists of iron and nickel but the pressure isn't high enough for it to be solid you pass through the boundary between the outer and inner core it's quite a challenge the temperature there is 10 800 degrees as hot as on the sun's surface and the pressure is 3.3 million times the atmospheric pressure at sea level the inner core is a solid ball made of iron and nickel its radius is 760 miles it makes 20 of the earth's radius and 80 of the moons scientists know what's going on under the crust of the planets that are millions and billions of miles away from us and they don't even need to go there drill through their surface and peek inside they combine information about the planet's density magnetic field mountain ranges heat and seismic activity to make their smart assumptions for example earth's magnetic field shields us and the atmosphere from solar flares and solar winds scientists believe that it exists thanks to a hot iron core inside the planet it rotates and generates invisible protection like an enormous scorching hot dynamo and this magnetic field is way stronger than that on mars it probably means that something happened to the red planet's core maybe it cooled down and kind of switched off or maybe there wasn't any magnetic field to begin with there are loads of active volcanoes on earth's surface that's how scientists can conclude there must be a relatively thin crust and the mantle must be made of liquid magma but martian volcanoes aren't active anymore there could have been a hot liquid mantle under the planet's crust once but after the volcanoes formed something went wrong the interior probably cooled down or the crust somehow became thicker whatever it was it successfully stopped magma from getting to the surface and then there's also seismic activity if many earth or mars or venus quakes happen on the planet there's a lot going on under the surface if we talk about earth it's the movements of tectonic plates most earthquakes happen along their edges if there's little seismic activity on the planet it might have no plate tectonics then its interior is calm researchers also pay attention to how long it takes a seismic wave to go through a planet or how it echoes inside it can help to get more information about the density of the crust what the mantle's made of and so on but scientists have to be extremely careful with the causes of these earthquakes sometimes they can occur after meteorites hit the planet and it has no connection with the processes going on under the surface of course these last two methods will only work with rock planets mainly because gas giants have neither volcanoes nor seismic activity boy all this talk about thin crust and thick crust is making me hungry hey you up for some pizza

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 290,223

Rating: 4.8943396 out of 5

Keywords: facts about the earth, space facts and mysteries, facts about nature, mysteries of space documentary, layers of the earth, deepest things ever, earth's mantle, the deepest artificial hole, earth's layers video, solar system, earth’s crust, bright side, continental crust, bright side space facts, earth layers 3d animation, facts about space and planets, deepest things in the world, earth’s core, closest planet to the sun, deepest things on earth, brightside, space facts

Id: Nw-za_NFVLE

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021