Giant blobs in Earth’s mantle may be driving a 'diamond factory' at the boundary of Earth’s core
The boundary zone between Earth's molten metal core and the mantle, its rocky middle layer, might be a diamond factory.
"We are adding a new idea that these are not entirely old structures," study lead author Sang-Heon Shim, a geoscientist at Arizona State University, told Live Science. To test the idea, the researchers pulled together the ingredients available in the core-mantle boundary and pressed them together with anvils made of diamond, generating pressures of up to 140 gigapascals. The researchers also heated the samples to 6,830 degrees Fahrenheit .
When this happens, the hydrogen seems to push aside other light elements in the core, including, crucially, carbon. This carbon gets booted out of the core and into the mantle. At the high pressures present in the core-mantle boundary, carbon's most stable form is diamond.
Proving this process happens thousands of kilometers below the surface is the next challenge. There are a couple of ways to look for evidence, Shim said.
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