Oceans' Worth of Water Hidden Deep in Earth, Ultra Rare Diamond Suggests (scientificamerican.com) 30
A beautiful blue flaw in a gem-quality diamond from Botswana is actually a tiny fragment of Earth's deep interior -- and it suggests our planet's mantle contains oceans' worth of water. Scientific American: The flaw, technically called an inclusion, looks like a fish eye: a deep blue center surrounded by a white haze. But it's really a pocket of the mineral ringwoodite from 660 kilometers down, at the boundary between the upper and lower mantle. This is just the second time scientists have found this mineral in a chunk of crystal from this zone, and the sample is the only one of its kind currently known to science. The last example was destroyed during an attempt to analyze its chemistry.
[...] The discovery indicates that this very deep zone of Earth is soggy, with vast amounts of water locked up tight within the minerals there. Though this water is chemically bound to the minerals' structure and doesn't flow around like an actual ocean, it does likely play an important role in how the mantle melts. This in turn affects big-picture geology, such as plate tectonics and volcanic activity. For example, water could contribute to the development of areas of mantle upwelling known as plumes, which are hotspots for volcanoes.
The stunning bit of diamond-encased mantle was discovered by Tingting Gu, a mineral physicist now at Purdue University, who was at the time doing research at the Gemological Institute of America. Her job was to study rare inclusions found in diamonds. Inclusions are undesirable for jewelry because they cloud a diamond's sparkle. But they're often interesting to scientists because they trap bits of the environment where the diamond formed millennia earlier. The vast majority of diamonds form between about 150 to 200 km below Earth's surface. But a handful come from much deeper. It is often difficult to pinpoint exactly how deep, but the new sample was remarkably accommodating on that front, Gu and her colleagues reported on Monday in a study published in Nature Geoscience. Ringwoodite can only form at incredibly high pressures. It is not found in Earth's crust, but it is sometimes seen trapped in meteorites that underwent major cosmic trauma. In Earth's mantle, ringwoodite exists at the pressures present down to 660 km.
[...] The discovery indicates that this very deep zone of Earth is soggy, with vast amounts of water locked up tight within the minerals there. Though this water is chemically bound to the minerals' structure and doesn't flow around like an actual ocean, it does likely play an important role in how the mantle melts. This in turn affects big-picture geology, such as plate tectonics and volcanic activity. For example, water could contribute to the development of areas of mantle upwelling known as plumes, which are hotspots for volcanoes.
The stunning bit of diamond-encased mantle was discovered by Tingting Gu, a mineral physicist now at Purdue University, who was at the time doing research at the Gemological Institute of America. Her job was to study rare inclusions found in diamonds. Inclusions are undesirable for jewelry because they cloud a diamond's sparkle. But they're often interesting to scientists because they trap bits of the environment where the diamond formed millennia earlier. The vast majority of diamonds form between about 150 to 200 km below Earth's surface. But a handful come from much deeper. It is often difficult to pinpoint exactly how deep, but the new sample was remarkably accommodating on that front, Gu and her colleagues reported on Monday in a study published in Nature Geoscience. Ringwoodite can only form at incredibly high pressures. It is not found in Earth's crust, but it is sometimes seen trapped in meteorites that underwent major cosmic trauma. In Earth's mantle, ringwoodite exists at the pressures present down to 660 km.
Alien life? (Score:5, Interesting)
With all that heat from the mantle and 4.5B years to stew, I wonder if the "under-earth ocean" is teeming with independently generated life, much like the areas around volcanic vents.
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I'll pass on the movie, but I'd watch a subtitled anime about a group of teenagers who go there to study this life and end up getting weird powers that they use to battle the evil forces unleashed by venturing too deep.
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Maybe Nevada and Arizona can use this water (Score:2)
Drill baby drill!
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
Turns out Jules Verne was right.
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Not sure if serious...
Hint: where does lava come from?
Re: Who is Sandy Loam? (Score:2)
Sandy Hill's 2nd cousin.
BTW: Sandy Hill was the first female weather reporter on TV in Seattle.
That was a couple years ago.
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Look up kimberlite pipe.
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Requisite biblical text... (Score:1, Troll)
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and the windows of heaven were opened.
And Russian Oligarchs started falling from them.
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Genesis also had a talking snake, what's yer point?
It turns out I have a transcript of a conversation that happened in the Garden of Eden:
G-d: Adam, where’s my apple?
Adam: Damn Jesus, keep yer voice down. Eve and that snake got into an argument over the apple. She thinks You and I put him up to it and she’s pissed. She bit the head off the snake and ate the apple.
G-d: Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark. Well Adam, time’s a’wasting, gotta run. Lucifer, you’re up, Satan
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Not to worry...DeBeers to the rescue (Score:2)
The deepest bore is 12km up till date (Score:2)
We only need to drill 55 times as deep to check it out.
Check under Mar-a-Lago also (Score:1)
negative mod points in 3...2...1...
ringwoodite (Score:2)
We need to mine this so we can finally construct Ringworld.
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