We somehow figured out from hypothetical considerations, What will happen if you dig a tunnel through the center of the Earth, and today I saw on the news such a sensational statement.
Russian and German physicists and geologists have discovered a previously unknown layer in the Earth's mantle, which contains a gigantic amount of liquid oxygen, while experimenting with a laser anvil press at the German Synchrotron Center DESY, as they described in their article in the journal Nature Communications.
“According to our estimates, this layer contains about 8-10 times more oxygen than the Earth's atmosphere. It was a big surprise for us, and we do not yet know what is happening with these “oxygen rivers” in the bowels of the planet,”said Elena Bykova from the University of Bayreuth (Germany).
Bykova and her colleagues found an unexpected source and accumulation of oxygen in the interior of the Earth, observing how various types of iron oxide, one of the main components of deep rocks, behave at different temperatures and pressures.
As the scientists explain, under normal conditions, iron oxide in the rocks of the Earth is hematite - a compound of two iron atoms and three oxygen atoms. In recent years, according to Bykova, chemists and physicists have discovered several new "versions" of iron oxide, which are formed at high pressures and temperatures and contain an exotic number of atoms - Fe4O5, Fe5O6, or, for example, Fe13O19.
The authors of the article found out that the list of iron oxides is not limited to this, having followed how hematite and its "magnetic" namesake magnetite, Fe3O4, behave in conditions close to the core and mantle of the Earth, compressing them with the help of laser "vice" PETRA III to a pressure exceeding atmospheric 670 thousand times.
This operation led to the decomposition of hematite and the formation of a new exotic iron oxide, Fe5O7, at pressures and temperatures corresponding to a depth of 1,500 kilometers. Further compression led to the formation of another unknown oxide, Fe25O32. Both, according to the researchers, led to the release of a huge mass of oxygen, which at such a depth and at such pressure turns not into gas, but into liquid.
The streams of this fluid, according to Bykova and her colleagues, often flow through the mantle at those points where deposits of magnetite and hematite, formed at the bottom of the sea, "flow" along with the rest of the mantle and crust matter towards the Earth's core.
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The fate of this oxygen remains unknown - these oxygen "rivers" can equally interact with the surrounding rocks and oxidize them, and rise to higher layers of the mantle and even higher.
In any case, the presence of oxygen, as noted by Maxim Bykov, one of the other authors of the article, suggests that complex and most active chemical processes can occur in the depths of the Earth, the existence of which we do not yet know, and which can affect not only geochemistry, but also on the climate and state of the planet's atmosphere.
