Beneath the surface of our world, there are mysterious processes that grind and roil.
Small chthonic diamonds are encased in skerricks of rare mineral every now and then. Information about our planet's interior can be gleaned from these small fragments.
A diamond recently found in a diamond mine in Africa. The diamond may have formed 660 kilometers below Earth's surface due to the presence of ringwoodite, ferropericlase, enstatite, and other minerals.
They think that the environment in which they formed is rich in water.
The occurrence of ringwoodite together with the hydrous phases indicates a wet environment at this boundary according to a team of researchers.
The majority of Earth's surface is covered in water. Considering the thousands of kilometers between the surface and the planet's core, they are barely puddles. The ocean is thick from the wave tops to the floor.
The Earth's surface is cracked and fragmented, with separate plates that slip under each other's edges. Water goes deeper into the planet at these subduction zones.
It goes back to the surface through volcanic activity. The deep water cycle is different from the water cycle at the surface. Understanding how it works and how much water is down there is important for understanding the geological activity of our planet. The presence of water can have an influence on the behavior of a volcano.
We have to wait for evidence of the water to come to us, as it does in the form of diamonds that form crystal cages, because we can't get down there.
Gu and her colleagues studied just such a gem in detail and found 12 mineral inclusions and a milky inclusion cluster The researchers used micro-rays and X-rays to determine the nature of the inclusions.
They found ringwoodite in contact with ferropericlase and enstatite, both magnesium silicates.
Ringwoodite can be found at the transition zone at high pressures. Brigmanite becomes enstatite at lower pressures. The diamond's presence tells a story of a journey, indicating the stone formed at depth before making its way back up to the ground.
There was more to that. The features of the ringwoodite suggest it is a mineral that forms in the presence of water. Other minerals found in the diamond are alsohydrous. The environment in which the diamond was formed was wet, according to these clues.
Evidence of water has been found before, but it hasn't been enough to gauge how much water is down there. Is it a chance inclusion from a small pocket of water or is it a bigger problem? The work done by Gu and her team points to something else.
"Although the formation of upper-mantle diamonds is often associated with the presence of fluids, super-deep diamonds with similar retrogressed mineral assemblages rarely have been observed accompanied with hydrous minerals," they wrote.
The ringwoodite with hydrous phases reported here is representative of a hydrous peridotitic environment at the transition zone boundary and indicates a more broadly hydrated transition zone down.
Previous research has shown that Earth is sucking more water out of it. This could answer the question of where it's all going.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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