There are three World Oceans at a depth of 400-600 kilometers. True, the water does not splash here, but is stored in a kind of "capsules" of minerals. An article about this sensational discovery has been published in one of the most prestigious scientific journals, Nature. Moreover, among the eight authors, five are Russians, the rest are from France and Germany. The team is headed by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sobolev from the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry. Vernadsky RAS. This discovery could force scientists to radically rethink theories about the formation of the Earth.
“Scientists have suspected the existence of this unusual water for a long time, and a couple of years ago, nature gave them a truly royal gift,” says Alexander Sobolev. - A diamond was found in Brazil that is 100 million years old. It was brought to the surface from a great depth, about 400-600 kilometers. Scientists have discovered a rare inclusion in the diamond - the mineral ringwoodite. But further analysis generally amazed the specialists: 1.4 percent of the water was in the mineral. If this is counted for the entire mineral underground, it turns out that huge reserves of water have accumulated in the bowels. The ringwoodite absorbed it like a sponge.
As is always the case in science, this discovery raised many new questions. And the most important: how could the oceans of water get to such a huge depth? An obvious hypothesis was immediately put forward: it "came" from the surface of the earth. Lithospheric plates drift in the ocean, collide and go into the mantle, carrying with them part of the water (subduction zone). For hundreds of millions, and possibly billions of years, it accumulated there, being part of solid minerals.
And this beautiful version has been questioned by Russian scientists. But for this they had to make a new discovery: to determine the age of ancient water. It could be, like a found diamond, 100 million years old, or it could be several billion.
“Of the various age marks known today, which the Earth has thrown from great depths to the surface, we have chosen a very rare breed - komatiite,” says Sobolev. - Why him? Science knows for sure that it could have formed when the Earth was very hot, and this was observed no later than 2 billion years ago. Then the temperature of the planet dropped, and the komatiites were no longer formed.
Scientists managed to find this rare "time stamp" in Canada; it was "sealed" together with water in tiny capsules of the rock, the size of a human hair, thrown to the surface of the earth from great depths. And to extract useful information from it, a unique method of analysis was required, which was developed by Russian scientists. Conclusion: the age of the mineral and ancient water is about 2.7 billion years.
According to scientists, now they will have to revise the tectonic version of how the ocean of water ended up at such a depth. Why? Today it is believed that plate movement began about 3 billion years ago. But once the found water is 2.7 billion years old, it turns out that a giant underground reservoir has been filled in some 300 million years. But this is unrealistic, since it descends very slowly and in small "doses". Another option remains: water appeared in the bowels of the Earth simultaneously with its birth and the formation of the planet. Science has to answer how true this version is.
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Yuri Medvedev