Imagine a young Earth—a seething ball of magma, barely fit for life. Yet hidden deep below the surface, a secret reservoir of water was quietly biding its time. A team of Chinese scientists just revealed how our planet’s deep mantle could have stored vast amounts of water over 4 billion years ago, turning a fiery world into a life-friendly one. 🤯🌊
Researchers from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, located on the Chinese mainland, have simulated extreme pressures and temperatures to recreate conditions hundreds of kilometers beneath the crust. They found that minerals like ringwoodite can trap water within their crystal structures, effectively making the deep mantle a massive, long-term reservoir.
This hidden stash of water could have slowly released via volcanic outgassing, fueling the formation of Earth’s early oceans and atmosphere. Without this built-in “water vault,” our planet might never have cooled enough to sustain life. 💧🌍
Published today in the journal Science, the study challenges traditional models of Earth’s evolution and opens new doors for exoplanet research. If other rocky worlds have similar deep-mantle dynamics, they too might hide the keys to habitability. 🪐
So next time you look at a glass of water, remember: some of that H₂O might trace its origins all the way to Earth’s deep interior, thanks to a cosmic game of hide-and-seek that began billions of years ago. 🚀
Reference(s):
Chinese scientists reveal how deep mantle water made Earth habitable
cgtn.com
