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posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the here-there-be-balrogs dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:59AM (#431781)

    11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. - Genesis 7:11-12 (NIV)

    There's enough water there to flood the entire earth.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @01:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @01:46PM (#431809)

      Are the floodgates of heaven god's goatse-hole?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @04:26PM (#431896)

      Hahahaha.... hohoho... oh wow...
      No, there is not.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:05PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:05PM (#431924) Journal

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @08:54PM (#433760)
        • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday November 27 2016, @10:35PM

          by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 27 2016, @10:35PM (#433788) Journal

          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

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday November 27 2016, @11:12PM (#433806) Journal

          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...
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by cellocgw on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:05PM

    by cellocgw (4190) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:05PM (#431814)

    Just wondering if the quoted fellow really knows what Pandora's Box contained. If so, we're in for a heap of trouble.

    --
    Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:35PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:35PM (#431831) Journal
      The article already indicates this box contains water which will plague geological theories which assumed a significant lack of water. But it also contains hope for fame and an extensive line of research contracts as far as the eye can see.
  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:16AM (#432252)

    Oh noes, time to recompile 30 years of man made global warming simulations as they might have found the 'missing heat'? ha, no, but the haystack just got much bigger and error lines need to be expanded (they dont include error lines in man made global warming simulations, and when they do its usually a fraction of what a physicist or chemist would publish -- not a scam!)

    Recomping that much work might cost money, lucky the industry's revenue under Obama's Administration has blown out to just over 1.5trillion dollars a year. Definitely not a situation of 'death of 1000 cuts' ;)