(ORDO NEWS) — The diamond discovered by scientists made it possible to find out that at a depth of 660 km there are colossal reservoirs, six times the volume of water in all oceans.
We are not talking literally about the underground “ocean”, but about the huge amount of water contained inside the minerals. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, explains how scientists came to these conclusions.
The clue came from a rare diamond found in the mines of Botswana, Africa, which provided more details about the region between the Earth‘s upper and lower mantles, known as the 660 km transition or rupture zone. This class of diamonds is formed at great depth and usually remains in the Earth for a long time.
The researchers concluded that this is a region very rich in water. The discovery of a large amount of water underground on a planet whose surface is 71% water may not seem like such a big discovery to us.
However, it is. The liquid water in all of the earth’s oceans is just a puddle compared to the water content under the earth’s crust.
Water is also found in minerals more than 322 kilometers underground, including in the upper mantle, the semi-plastic layer on which the crust “floats”.
The researchers found that the diamond contains inclusions or small fragments of other minerals that may contain more water and appear to have existed at the boundary between the upper and lower mantles.
The results show that there may be significantly more water at greater depths than previously thought. This will have other implications, for example for plate tectonics.
The goal of the study is so that scientists can use the results to study how water in the mantle can influence the Earth’s internal convection current.
Until now, it has not been known about the long-term effect of “suction” of material into the transition zone on its geochemical composition and whether more water exists there. Apparently, water penetrates deeper into the planet and reaches the lower mantle.
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