 Mantle Convection, Mantle Convection is the slow creeping motion of Earth's solid silicate mantle caused by convection currents carrying heat from the interior to the planet's surface. The Earth's surface lithosphere, which rides atop the asthenosphere the two components of the upper mantle is divided into a number of plates that are continuously being created and consumed at their opposite plate boundaries. The creation occurs as mantle is added to the growing edges of a plate, associated with sea floor spreading. This hot added material cools down by conduction and convection of heat. At the consumption edges of the plate, the material has thermally contracted to become dense, and it sinks under its own weight in the process of subduction usually at an ocean trench. This subducted material sinks through the Earth's interior. Some subducted material appears to reach the lower mantle, while in other regions, this material is impeded from sinking further, possibly due to a phase transition from spinel to silicate perovskite and magnetoestite, an endothermic reaction. The subducted oceanic crust triggers volcanism, although the basic mechanisms are varied. Volcanism may occur due to processes that act buoyancy to partially melted mantle causing an upward flow due to a decrease in density of the partial melt. Big forms of convection that may result in surface volcanism are postulated to occur as a consequence of interplate extension and mantle plumes. It is because the mantle can convet that the tectonic plates are able to move around the Earth's surface. Mantle convection seems to have been much more active during the Hadean period, resulting in gravitational sorting of heavier molten iron, and nickel elements and sulfides in the core, and lighter silicate minerals in the mantle.