A groundbreaking study reveals that Earth’s surface water reaches the core, altering its composition and suggesting a more dynamic core-mantle interaction and a complex global water cycle.
A few decades ago, seismologists imaging the deep planet identified a thin layer, just over a few hundred kilometers thick. The origin of this layer, known as the E prime layer, has been a mystery — until now.
An international team of researchers, including Arizona State University scientists Dan Shim, Taehyun Kim, and Joseph O’Rourke of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, has revealed that water from the Earth’s surface can penetrate deep into the planet, altering the composition of the outermost region of the metallic liquid core and creating a distinct, thin layer.
Their research was published on November 13 in the journal
Chemical Interactions at the Core-Mantle Boundary
Along with Yong Jae Lee of
Reference: “A hydrogen-enriched layer in the topmost outer core sourced from deeply subducted water” by Taehyun Kim, Joseph G. O’Rourke, Jeongmin Lee, Stella Chariton, Vitali Prakapenka, Rachel J. Husband, Nico Giordano, Hanns-Peter Liermann, Sang-Heon Shim and Yongjae Lee, 13 November 2023, Nature Geoscience.
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-023-01324-x
This study was conducted by an international team of geoscientists using advanced experimental techniques at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Lab and PETRA III of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Germany to replicate the extreme conditions at the core-mantle boundary.
Members of the team and their key roles from ASU are Kim, who began this project as a visiting PhD student and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Earth and Space Exploration; Shim, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration, who spearheaded the high-pressure experimental work; and O’Rourke, an assistant professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration, who performed computational simulations to comprehend the formation and persistence of the core’s altered thin layer. Lee led the research team from Yonsei University, along with key research scientists Vitali Prakapenka and Stella Chariton at the Advanced Photon Source and Rachel Husband, Nico Giordano, and Hanns-Peter Liermann at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron.
This work was supported by the NSF Earth Science program.