The Depth of Europe #
Though many angsty American teenagers probably think Europeans are “so much deeper” than American, this isn’t about that. This is about the fact that as a reformed geology nerd I feel obligated to take every possible opportunity to bring up the “Mohorovicic Discontintinuty.”
While the Earth’s global crust is an average of eight kilometers thick in the oceans and thirty-two kilometers thick under the continents, the new higher-res map shows a surprising amount of crust depth variation. The low-lands around the Netherlands sit on Pizza Hut flat rocks as thin (5-15 km) as some ocean crust while Finland’s got a 50+ kilometer thick lithosphere.
The scientists found that the so-called Mohorovicic Discontinuity, the boundary where the crust meets the mantle, lies at more variable depth than previously thought.