(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists from Harvard University examined our planet’s mantle and found that it was four times hotter in the past.
This suggests that she could not keep the current amount of water in herself, which means that even before the emergence of life, the Earth was covered only by the ocean.
The idea that the Earth was once a watery world has long been debated by scientists. To prove this theory, American scientists decided to study the planet’s mantle.
The fact is that underground water is a compound of the hydroxyl group of oxygen and hydrogen atoms. It is stored in a “petrified” state in two types of olivine volcanic mineral: wadsleyite and ringwoodite.
After collecting existing samples of these minerals, the team determined that wadsleyite contains about 3% water, and ringwoodite about 1%. Next, the scientists studied data from previous studies that subjected these two minerals to intense pressure and different temperatures.
It turned out that earlier, when the temperature of the mantle was much higher, these compounds had a lower ability to hold water.
Planetologist Junjie Dong, one of the authors of the work, said: “This suggests that the water must have been somewhere else.
The most likely reservoir for this was the surface.” But as the planet continually cools, minerals deep within the mantle can hold on to more and more water, exposing the Earth.
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