New Evidence for Oceans of Water Deep in the Earth
upstart writes:
Water bound in mantle rock alters our view of the Earth's composition:
Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of New Mexico report evidence for potentially oceans worth of water deep beneath the United States. Though not in the familiar liquid form - the ingredients for water are bound up in rock deep in the Earth's mantle - the discovery may represent the planet's largest water reservoir.
The presence of liquid water on the surface is what makes our "blue planet" habitable, and scientists have long been trying to figure out just how much water may be cycling between Earth's surface and interior reservoirs through plate tectonics.
Northwestern geophysicist Steve Jacobsen and University of New Mexico seismologist Brandon Schmandt have found deep pockets of magma located about 400 miles beneath North America, a likely signature of the presence of water at these depths. The discovery suggests water from the Earth's surface can be driven to such great depths by plate tectonics, eventually causing partial melting of the rocks found deep in the mantle.
The findings, to be published June 13 in the journal Science, will aid scientists in understanding how the Earth formed, what its current composition and inner workings are and how much water is trapped in mantle rock.
"Geological processes on the Earth's surface, such as earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, are an expression of what is going on inside the Earth, out of our sight," said Jacobsen, a co-author of the paper. "I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet. Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades."
A blue crystal of ringwoodite containing around one percent of H2O in its crystal structure is compressed to conditions of 700 km depth inside a diamond-anvil cell. Using a laser to heat the sample to temperatures over 1500C (orange spots), the ringwoodite transformed to minerals found in the lowermost mantle. Synchrotron-infrared spectra collected on beamline U2A at the NSLS reveal changes in the OH-absorption spectra that correspond to melt generation, which was also detected by seismic waves underneath most of North America.
Scientists have long speculated that water is trapped in a rocky layer of the Earth's mantle located between the lower mantle and upper mantle, at depths between 250 miles and 410 miles. Jacobsen and Schmandt are the first to provide direct evidence that there may be water in this area of the mantle, known as the "transition zone," on a regional scale. The region extends across most of the interior of the United States.
Schmandt, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of New Mexico, uses seismic waves from earthquakes to investigate the structure of the deep crust and mantle. Jacobsen, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, uses observations in the laboratory to make predictions about geophysical processes occurring far beyond our direct observation.
The study combined Jacobsen's lab experiments in which he studies mantle rock under the simulated high pressures of 400 miles below the Earth's surface with Schmandt's observations using vast amounts of seismic data from the USArray, a dense network of more than 2,000 seismometers across the United States.
Jacobsen's and Schmandt's findings converged to produce evidence that melting may occur about 400 miles deep in the Earth. H2O stored in mantle rocks, such as those containing the mineral ringwoodite, likely is the key to the process, the researchers said.
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