The interior of the Earth its structure, constitution and evolution / Недра Земли, их строение, конституция и эволюция

This book has been written to bring up to date The Interior of the Earth, published in 1971 following the plate tectonic revolution. Plate tectonic theory has now been widely accepted as a unifying theory for the origin ofthe Earth’s major surface features, and the broad viewpoint taken in 1971 has been vindicated. The last ten years, however, has been a period of continuing rapid advance in earth sciences. The structure of the Earth’s interior has become much better defined. A new understanding ofthe physical processes within the Earth which permit the escape of heat from the deep interior, drive the geomagnetic dynamo and cause the plate motions, is emerging. Consequently, much of the original text has had to be re-written to produce this new book. The same general plan as that ofThe Interior ofthe Earth is followed. An introductory chapter reviews the Earth as a planet, describing its broad structure, composition, origin and rotation. The physical and chemical structure of the crust, mantle and core are described in the following five chapters. Chapter 5 on continental margins has been newly introduced; and the discussion of continental drift, sea-floor spreading and plate tectonics is incorporated in Chapters 2 and 3 on the crust rather than forming a separate chapter later in the book. The last three chapters deal with processes in the lithosphere and underlying parts of the mantle. The new understanding of the interior supply of heat and its mechanisms of escape from the deep interior is described in Chapter 7. This is followed in Chapter 8 by a discussion of rheology, where the discoveries of modern physics have had an important bearing on the acceptance ofthe new mobilistic view ofthe Earth. The final chapter speculates on the mechanism of global tectonics, which is seen as a byeproduct of the escape of heat from the interior. Ways in which this may cause plate motions and continental splitting are discussed. An extensive list of references at the end of the book has been subdivided according to chapter to assist those wishing to follow up specific topics in greater detail. The book has been written for undergraduate and graduate students of geology and of geophysics, and for earth scientists requiring a general account of the discoveries of solid earth geophysics. In order thatit can be comprehensible to all who are interested in the broad structure of the Earth, the mathematical treatment has been omitted although a few essential formulae are included.
In any rapidly advancing branch of science, it is certain that further important findings and theories will have been made before the time ofpublication. Every effort has been made to make the book broadly up to date at the time of going to press, but in a compilation of this breadth it is impossible to give full coverage to the increasingly voluminous literature. Selection has been necessary, and this has been done in an attempt to give a balanced picture of the present state of knowledge. <...>