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A mineral far below Earth's surface may hold the key to how much water is stored in the planet, a Florida State University researcher says.
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [Abstract], FSU Assistant Professor of Geology Mainak Mookherjee reports that water exists far deeper in Earth than scientists previously thought.
Mookherjee and Andreas Hermann from the University of Edinburgh estimate that in the deep Earth -- roughly 400 to 600 kilometers into the mantle -- water is stored and transported through a high-pressure polymorph of the mineral brucite.
Previously, scientists thought brucite was not thermodynamically stable that deep in Earth. "This opens up a Pandora's Box for us," Mookherjee said.
"We didn't think water could be stored by hydrous minerals such as brucite at these depths. But now that we know it's there, we need to figure out how much water could be effectively stored inside it."
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:05PM
Does the paper say it comes to the surface? I would guess this stuff rarely or never does, and has more to do with the continued existence of plate tectonics and deep-mantle flow than anything on the surface. Incidentally this may have implications in the search for ET life; Venus and Mars may be dead partly because of lack of tectonics and a functioning water and carbon cycle...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @08:54PM
There's a lot of water down there: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/16/study-deep-beneath-north-america-theres-more-water-than-in-all-the-oceans-combined/ [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25723-massive-ocean-discovered-towards-earths-core [newscientist.com]
From a planet scale it wouldn't take that much water to flood the earth: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/gallery/global-water-volume.html [usgs.gov]
Just a little "burp"...
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday November 27 2016, @10:35PM
Indeed there's a lot. Perhaps three times as much water as all the oceans although most/all of it is bound and it's unclear how much of it could be released (and/or taken in) and how easily, at least to me (I'm not grokking the "dehydration melting" bit). or even how much layer interaction and water transportation is "normal" and how "brittle" the mechanism is to geological events and so on. Tons of questions to figure out and predictions to check and measure. Anyhow it's a huge volume of water that has been added as both possible and likely.
For such big news it's too bad the paper isn't openly available but the NextBigFuture take on the news [nextbigfuture.com] is pretty good with some helpful illustrations as well.
If (if!) a geological event releasing a small portion of that water happened once in humanity's "pre-history" such a "burp" (or rather "spew" lol) could easily be a core of truth behind stories and myths of enormous "floods".
More knowledge required :) (thus it's real science! j/k).
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday November 27 2016, @11:12PM
Okay, but none of that is going to make the Yahweh the Flying Canaanite Genocide Fairy actually exist, or at least exist and actually be God.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...