New Report from UC Davis : Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core

Report: Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth's core

Scientists explain that understanding the physical processes that take place inside our planet is fundamental for the interpretation of seismic data from the earth's mantle. At the core of our planet are large quantities of nickel and molten iron and, as shown by a recent study published by scientists at the University of California Davis (UC Davis), the United States of America, the latter has a number of isotopes. which behaves differently. Thus, the study shows that the heavy isotopes of iron, which are differentiated by the greater number of neutrons, "migrate" to the "periphery" of the nucleus and then to the Earth's mantle and this due to the lower temperatures. chemical transfer between the depths and the surface of the planet.

Earth's Leaky Core photo: Technology Networks

In this study, the team led by Professor Lesher studied the behavior of iron isotopes at different temperatures and pressures and explains that the data thus collected provide an explanation for the high content of iron isotopes in the rocks that formed in the mantle. comparison with that of the material from which the Solar System was formed

"If this is correct, that means improving our understanding of the core-shell interaction," explains Dr. Charles Lesher, senior author and emeritus professor at UC Davis.e, the results suggest that the iron in the core has leaked into the billions of years," adds Professor Lesher. 

Laurentian University Dr. Michael Lesher

A striking phenomenon occurs deep within the Earth that a new University of California study has observed. These are the isotopes of iron, which according to the researchers, seem to flow from the outer core of our planet to the lower mantle that covers it. Sputnik tells you the details.
About 2,900 kilometers below our feet they unite the outer core, made up of liquid materials, and the lower section of the mantle. At the transition point from one stratum to another, a drastic temperature change of more than 1,000 degrees occurs.

Earth's Leaking Core - Online Star Register

The study takes into account isotopes, or in other words, they are atoms whose atomic nuclei have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons and therefore have slightly varying masses. Well, as the experts conclude, heavier isotopes of iron migrate at lower temperatures, that is, they rise to the mantle, while the lighter ones go to the core.

The new study suggests heavier iron isotopes migrate toward lower temperatures — and into the mantle — while lighter iron isotopes circulate back down into the core. (Isotopes of the same element have different numbers of neutrons, giving them slightly different masses.) This effect could cause core material infiltrating the lowermost mantle to be enriched in heavy iron isotopes.

Big Diamonds From Great Depths and how do Gemstones Form: The most valuable jewelry offers researchers important information from the depths of the Earth

Geologists studied these scraps of diamond leftover from the shaping of big jewels. Evan Smith/Gemological Institute of America

Evan Smith wanted to get his hands on the world's biggest diamonds — the kind that sit at royal scepters, and the ones that are always the target of elaborate movie heists.

But this wasn't for some nefarious get-rich-quick scheme. It was for science.

"The most valuable, the most prized, of all gemstones are coincidentally some of the most scientifically valuable pieces of the Earth," says Smith, a diamond geologist at the Gemological Institute of America.

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They're scientifically valuable because they come from a deep part of the Earth that humans can't access and don't know that much about.

GEMSTONE TREASURES OF THE WORLD POSTER  Jewelry auction Pinterest

Because of their rare size and quality, Smith thought these diamonds might have come from somewhere different, though no one knew exactly where.

"It was a total mystery," says Smith.

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To solve that mystery, he'd have to look inside the diamonds, at tiny specs of junk no wider than a human hair that the crystals had brought with them on their journey from the deep.

"You really couldn't ask for a better vessel to store something in. Diamond is the ultimate Tupperware," says Smith.

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A slogan like "the ultimate Tupperware" won't sell many engagement rings, but for scientists, the diamonds' Tupperware-quality is key. It makes the geologic equivalent of messages in a bottle.

But Smith couldn't just knock on a royal palace door and ask to crack open the crown jewels.

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Evan Smith

Gemological Institute of America

Instead, he got the Gemological Institute of America to buy eight fingernail-sized chunks of those big diamonds, the scraps leftover from when the rough diamonds were cut into sparkly jewels.

Earth structure infographic Freepik

After grinding some down and cutting others open, Smith used fancy techniques involving big microscopes, lasers and electron beams to figure what was inside. He also used some not-so-fancy equipment — a magnet attached to a string — to figure out if they contained iron. ("After staring at these inclusions for hours on end over the course of many months, you start to resort to some alternative tools," he says).

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Smith eventually found that many of the stones contained bits of garnet with a silicon content indicating that they must have formed under very high pressure. He also found iron and nickel, shrouded in invisible envelopes of fluid methane.

"That's unusual. This is the first time I've seen methane around an inclusion," he says.


When he took a nondestructive look at 53 other diamonds passing through the institute for quality grading, he found that 38 of them contained the same unusual materials.

As Smith and his colleagues wrote Thursday in the journal Science, those odd bits and pieces told him two important things.

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"One, they tell us that these large, exceptional-quality diamonds originate from extreme depths in the Earth," he says, from about 200 to 500 miles below us.

That's about as far under our feet as the International Space Station is above our heads. And it's about twice as deep as where most diamonds are born.

"So, that in itself is pretty amazing," says Smith.


The second thing he learned is that the diamonds had formed inside oxygen-deprived patches of liquid metal. And that's the first hard evidence that the Earth's mantle is not a uniform stew of oxygen-rich rocks

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It might not sound very exciting, says Kanani Lee, a mineral physicist at Yale University, but it is.

"It further complicates things, but it makes us have to think more deeply about what's going on in the planet because ultimately this does affect what we see up on the surface," says Lee.

As the Earth cooled over the last 4.5 billion years, its layers slowly revolved from the core to the surface and back again. Until recently, scientists expected that the mantle, the part of the planet between the continental plates and its core, would be pretty thoroughly mixed, with oxygen distributed throughout. But these diamonds show that until relatively recently, there were pockets that somehow managed to resist that mixing.

A rare diamond carried this tiny package of material from hundreds of miles underground. It's about as wide as a poppy seed. Evan Smith/Gemological Institute of America

And those pockets were long-lasting and widespread enough to produce diamonds that surfaced on multiple continents and that range in age from about 100 million years old to about a billion years old.

It's unclear if those pockets are still around now. Nevertheless, it means that the planet and its past could be a little messier than scientists first thought.

"It tells you that we have to refine our thinking about how the planet – whether it's Earth or any other planet — evolves with time. And that our simple pictures may not be good enough anymore if we can't explain these features," says Lee.

Those odd features are just slivers of a much larger picture — how Earth became what it is today, including its ability to host life.


"Over time, those are the things that shape the surface of the Earth. They're the materials that the whole surface of the Earth is built with," Smith says.

Other articles on the same theme:

• Top 10 undiscovered treasures

• New Anglo-Saxon precious treasure, discovered by archaeologists in England

• A new treasure has been discovered in Greece it was found in the ruins of an ancient city dating back 2,500 years

• Giant Blobs of Rock, Deep Inside the Earth, Hold Important Clues About Our Planet

• New Report: Heavy iron isotopes leaking from Earth’s core

• It was discovered a huge reservoir of melted carbon deep beneath Earth's surface in the Western United States

• Earth's mantle cools more quickly than was previously thought

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