A small rough diamond accidentally found in the shallow bed of a river in western Brazil, which originated from the Earth's thorns, led scientists to the impressive estimate that at depths of 410 to 660 kilometers there is an unknown so far "wet zone" with huge underground water reserves, which can be at least as many as the oceans of the planet, if not much more!
This volume of water does not flow, but is held within the minerals. "It's not a Jules Verne-style ocean where a boat can sail," said geochemistry professor Graham Pearson of Canada's University of Alberta, who studyin the diamond and its creation in a wet environment. The relevant publication by an international scientific team, led by Graham Pearson, was made in the journal "Nature", according to the BBC, "Science" and the British "Guardian".
The length of just five millimeters and a weight of 0,09 gram of precious crystal is estimated to have ejected from a depth of 500 km on the surface through a volcanic eruption. "It's a pretty ugly diamond. It shows he went to hell and came back, "said the professor of geochemistry.
Most diamonds, used for jewelry, are created in smaller depth of about 150-200 kilometers. Those that are created at great depth, in the so-called "transition zone" of the mantle below the crust, stand out because they are very distressed in appearance and have a different chemical composition.
Spectroscopic analysis of this particular small diamond revealed within it the existence of a rare mineral, a ringudite, a form of olivine that forms under terrifyingly high pressure in the subsurface and of which most of the upper mantle is composed. No one until today had seen with the eyes of the Ringudite from such a great depth.
However, most importantly, this rhombus, measuring only 40 micrometers (millionths of a meter), contained about 1,5% water by weight. "This ratio does not sound great, but if you count the huge quantities of rhinoceros that are believed to exist in the great depths of the Earth, then the amount of water down there must be equivalent to the water of all the oceans on the planet," more than one billions of tons of water, said the Canadian scientist.
In the worst case, according to the scientists, there must be local "oases" of water in the interior of the Earth, which together make up a huge reserve of water in the region just below the cortex. Water can dissolve in molten magma, reach beneath the massive tectonic plates and weaken them, thereby facilitating volcanic eruptions.
The discovery also shows that large amounts of water can be hidden inside other rocky planets like Mars. It is no coincidence that the Rigwavites have been found in meteorites that have fallen on Earth.
There are two theories about the origin of the water at such a great depth. Either it gets there constantly from the ocean along with the procedure subduction of the tectonic plates, whether it predated the beginning of the creation of the planet, as part of the primary materials that formed the Earth.
Link: For original scientific work (subscription) at:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7491/full/nature13080.html
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