Know About Five Oceans on Earth? The Sixth has just been Discovered
upstart writes:
Know about five oceans on Earth? The sixth has just been discovered
There are five oceans on Earth: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern Ocean. An international team of scientists has now found evidence of considerable quantities of water between the Earth's upper and lower mantle.
The evidence was found during the analysis of a rare diamond that formed 660 kilometers below the Earth's surface confirming the theory that ocean water accompanies subducting slabs and thus enters the transition zone. The new findings reveal that Earth's water cycle includes the Earth's interior.
The study by the German-Italian-American research team has been published in the journal Nature, which states that the internal structure and dynamics of Earth have been shaped by the 660km boundary between the mantle transition zone and the lower mantle.
[...] The evidence points to water in the transition zone (TZ), the boundary layer that separates the Earth's upper mantle and the lower mantle. The boundary is located at a depth of 410 to 660 kilometers, where immense pressure of up to 23,000 bar causes the olive-green mineral olivine to alter its crystalline structure.
Journal Reference:
Tingting Gu, Martha G. Pamato, Davide Novella, et al. Hydrous peridotitic fragments of Earth's mantle 660km discontinuity sampled by a diamond, Nat. Geosci. (2022). (DOI:Nature Geoscience)
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