A rare gemstone holding trapped water suggests a massive reservoir, as large as our oceans combined, may be hidden in the Earth’s mantle.
Jules Verne wrote about many fantastical things, and several real-world innovators have him to thank for their inspiration, including submarine and rocket pioneers. It may still come as a surprise though, how often his writings predict reality, and it seems to have happened again. In Verne’s book,*Journey to the Center of the Earth, he describes a prehistoric landscape hidden deep below the earth’s crust, with giant plants, dinosaurs and vast oceans. While we won’t be finding any dinos alive under our feet, the science-fiction writer may have been right about the ocean part.
Researchers recently discovered a rare gemstone called ringwoodite, which is created when olivine, a very common mineral in the Earth’s mantle, becomes highly pressurized. When it is exposed to less pressure, it reverts into olivine again. It has been found in meteorite samples and has been created artificially, but until now, the gem has never been discovered naturally in the earth. University of Alberta diamond expert Graham Pearson came across a brown diamond while he was looking for other minerals in Mato Grosso, Brazil. When he investigated the diamond, he discovered ringwoodite contained within it.
Almost as surprising as the find itself was that the 1.5% of the ringwoodite’s weight was composed of trapped water. By analyzing the pressure and composition of the water, Pearson has concluded that there is a massive body of water hidden beneath the surface of the Earth. The finding “confirms predictions from high-pressure laboratory experiments that a water reservoir comparable in size to all the oceans combined is hidden deep in Earth’s mantle”. No, you didn’t misread that. The location of this reservoir is somewhere between the upper and lower mantle, between 100* and 400km below the surface of the Earth.
Earth’s mantle may have a great ocean hidden within it [Image credit: University of Alabama]
The part of the mantle where the ringwoodite originated, known as the transition zone, has so far been somewhat of a mystery to scientists. There has been uncertainty as to what exactly can be found down there, with some suggesting that it may be completely dry, while others claim our oceans may indeed have originated from it.
Pearson believes the diamond may have reached the surface via a volcanic eruption, and then settled into the river bed where he eventually found it. “It was a piece of luck, this discovery, as are many scientific discoveries,” Pearson said.
Source: Vice
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