Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.
The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet's deep mantle. [The World's Biggest Oceans and Seas]
The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.
Looking down deep
The pair analysed more than 600,000 seismograms — records of waves generated by earthquakes traveling through the Earth—collected from instruments scattered around the planet. [Image Gallery: This Millennium's Destructive Earthquakes]
They noticed a region beneath Asia where seismic waves appeared to dampen, or "attenuate," and also slow down slightly. "Water slows the speed of waves a little," Wysession explained. "Lots of damping and a little slowing match the predictions for water very well."
Previous predictions calculated that if a cold slab of the ocean floor were to sink thousands of miles into the Earth's mantle, the hot temperatures would cause water stored inside the rock to evaporate out.
"That is exactly what we show here," Wysession said. "Water inside the rock goes down with the sinking slab and it's quite cold, but it heats up the deeper it goes, and the rock eventually becomes unstable and loses its water."
The water then rises up into the overlying region, which becomes saturated with water [image]. "It would still look like solid rock to you,” Wysession told LiveScience. "You would have to put it in the lab to find the water in it."
Although they appear solid, the composition of some ocean floor rocks is up to 15 percent water. "The water molecules are actually stuck in the mineral structure of the rock," Wysession explained. "As you heat this up, it eventually dehydrates. It's like taking clay and firing it to get all the water out."
The researchers estimate that up to 0.1 percent of the rock sinking down into the Earth's mantle in that part of the world is water, which works out to about an Arctic Ocean's worth of water.
"That's a real back of the envelope type calculation," Wysession said. "That's the best that we can do at this point."
The Beijing anomaly
Wysession has dubbed the new underground feature the "Beijing anomaly," because seismic wave attenuation was found to be highest beneath the Chinese capital city. Wysession first used the moniker during a presentation of his work at the University of Beijing.
"They thought it was very, very interesting," Wysession said. "China is under greater seismic risk than just about any country in the world, so they are very interested in seismology." [Natural Disasters: Top 10 US Threats]
Water covers 70 percent of Earth's surface and one of its many functions is to act like a lubricant for the movement of continental plates.
"Look at our sister planet, Venus," Wysession said. "It is very hot and dry inside Venus, and Venus has no plate tectonics. All the water probably boiled off, and without water, there are no plates. The system is locked up, like a rusty Tin Man with no oil."
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Replies
The fact that they only just found out that there is a huge body of water there, just shows how much they do not actually know about the insides of our planet, they our scientists are only speculating when they say our planet is layered with specific layers, they actually do not know.... only time will tell.
They DO know, that is EXACTLY what they are saying. They know from the seismographs that the earth is NOT NOT NOT NOT hollow. They were surprised that there is WATER in the LAVA area.
What is the most laughable here is this guy posts the most "inner earth" postings of anyone here and now posts this which COMPLETELY disproves the inner earth nonsense.
The Earth is NOT hollow, however there COULD be another earth SHARING this same space. The hollow earth nomenclature is NOT meant to be taken literally, just like black HOLES are not holes AT ALL.
One, i am not questioning what it is they just found out, i am saying, they only JUST found it out, which goes to show that they do not know ALL about the inner workings of our planet!
Personally i do not know much about the inner earth/hollow earth speculation, so i will not comment. :D
;D
They just found out there is water in a different spot from where they already found water, and I am certain this article is a few years old already, since the poster did not post the link back to the original article we will never know.
Science readily admits they do not "know" for certain what is at the center of our earth, but they DO know how seismographs work and they KNOW it isnt hollow.
I could post an article with no date saying that man has just flown an airplane for the first time, it doesnt make it new because it was posted here today.