This particular area of the earth, the transition zone could contain as much water as all oceans combined.
In 1864, the French writer Jules Verne in his novel Journey to the Center of the Earth , had imagined an ocean in the bowels of the planet … It might be seen quite well, even if the team Graham Pearson does not speak of water in liquid form, but contained in a very special mineral. however, remains to be determined, as Hans Keppler stresses, if the ringwoodite sample analyzed is representative of the entire transition zone mantle.
This so-called “coat” is below the earth’s crust to core of the Earth, to a depth of 2 900 km.Between the two main parts of the mantle (the upper mantle and the lower mantle), is an area called “transition” between 410 km and 660 km depth. ‘s main mineral of the upper mantle is olivine. When the depth, and therefore the pressure increase, olivine transforms, changes state in some way. Between 410 and 520 km, becomes wadsleyite, then between 520 and 660 km ringwoodite, a mineral which contains water.
This variety of olivine has been found in meteorites, but never from the Earth itself, because an inaccessible depth. “Until now, nobody had ever seen the mantle ringwoodite Earth, even if geologists were convinced of its existence “ , says Hans Keppler, University of Bayreuth (Germany), in an editorial also published in the journalNature .
This is a very special microscopic inclusion of ringwoodite, a mineral that has allowed his team to confirm that experimental studies tended to show: the mantle has a “water transition zone” . mineral analysis allowed determine that it contains a significant amount of water, approximately 1.5% of its weight. diamond came to the surface of the Earth in a volcanic rock included.
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