I don’t understand how all of the weight on the Earth doesn’t force it to collapse on itself? What is the Earth using to provide this force that is stopping us from falling through. Obviously gravity is a thing but I don’t even understand that well enough lol.
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It *is* collapsing in on itself. Pressure in the mantle is around 200,000 atm for the uppermost part and around 1 million atm close to the core. These are pressures that are so high that the same materials which would be solid rock at the surface behave more like a liquid. But, all this material has nowhere to go. It’s collapsing in on itself equally from all directions, crushed under the immense weight of all the rock above it, but *also* being compressed by the material around and below it. No matter how high the pressure gets these materials are still taking up some volume. So the earth maintains its shape
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