The Biggest Mystery Of The Earth Core Is Solved?
A team of Japanese scientists from Tokyo University says that they are closer to solve the biggest mystery of the Earth core.
They found that Silicon likely makes up a significant proportion of the Earth’s core after iron and nickel. They have identified it as the ‘missing element’ in the deep interiors of our planet that has eluded us for decades.
This discovery leads us to understand the formation of our world.
This Is What The Discovery Says
Lead researcher and Geophysicist Eiji Ohtani at Tohoku University in northern Japan suggested that the Earth’s inner core is composed of 85 percent iron and 10 percent nickel.
The material comprising the remaining 5 percent remains in dispute. Silicon is a leading candidate, alongside sulphur and oxygen.
Ohtani’s team performed various experiments on iron-nickel alloys mixed with silicon, at high temperatures and pressure which close to found in the inner core.
He discovered that the data for the mixed material observed with X-rays matched seismic data—namely, sound velocity, or seismic waves—obtained for the inner earth core.
He quoted “Our latest experiments suggest that the remaining five percent of the inner earth core is composed mostly of silicon”
The findings were presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
He said that the findings helps understand whether the Earth’s surface was rich in oxygen in its early formation before photosynthesis began or not? Oxygen is the another potential candidate for the mystery element” in the Earth’s inner core.”
“We measured the sound velocity of iron alloy compounds at high pressure and temperature relevant to the Earth’s core,” they stated.
Support from Cambridge University
Professor Simon Redfern at the University of Cambridge’s Earth Sciences department supported these results.
He suggested to the BBC, “If we agree to the findings, that means that the Earth’s surface was oxygen-rich at the time of the planet’s creation and O2 was the third element”.
“These difficult experiments are really exciting because they can provide a window into what earth’s interior was like soon after it first formed, 4.5 billion years ago, when the core first started to separate from the rocky parts of Earth”
Earth’s inner core
It is known that innermost part of Earth is a solid ball with a radius of about 1,200 kilometres and 4828 kilometers.
The Earth is underground with temperature of over 5,400 °C. It is the very center of our planet and the temperature is the same as the surface of the Sun. The core is 3.6 million times more pressurized than Earth’s surface.
Ohtani cautioned that more work needs to be done to confirm his findings on silicon.
Detailed Information can be found here: American Geophysical Union