Carbonates make diamonds grow in the Earth's mantle

Diamonds that no-one ever sees can form deep in the Earth’s interior. This is due to the chemical conditions controlling the associated carbon cycle. Swiss researchers used laboratory experiments to show how this happens.

Our planet's most abundant mineral now has a name

Deep below the earth's surface lies a thick, rocky layer called the mantle, which makes up the majority of our planet's volume. For decades, scientists have known that most of the lower mantle is a silicate mineral with a ...

Remixed mantle suggests early start of plate tectonics

New Curtin University research on the remixing of Earth's stratified deep interior suggests that global plate tectonic processes, which played a pivotal role in the existence of life on Earth, started to operate at least ...

CT scan of Earth links deep mantle plumes with volcanic hotspots

University of California, Berkeley, seismologists have produced for the first time a sharp, three-dimensional scan of Earth's interior that conclusively connects plumes of hot rock rising through the mantle with surface hotspots ...

Earth's mantle plasticity explained

Earth's mantle is a solid layer that undergoes slow, continuous convective motion. But how do these rocks deform, thus making such motion possible, given that minerals such as olivine (the main constituent of the upper mantle) ...

Team records neutrinos from the Earth's mantle

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers working on the Borexino Collaboration at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy is reporting that they have detected neutrinos emanating from the Earth's mantle. In their paper published ...

World's longest continental volcano chain in Australia

Scientists have discovered the world's longest known chain of continental volcanoes, running 2,000 kilometres across Australia, from the Whitsundays in North Queensland to near Melbourne in central Victoria.

Carbon dioxide forms polymeric materials under high pressure

Carbon dioxide is a molecular gas at ambient conditions and an important consitituent of the Earth’s atmosphere. It is also a likely component in the Earth’s mantle, and it plays an important role in the life cycle. But ...

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