Tons of Pressurized Oxygen Could Be Hiding Out in Earth's Molten Iron Core

[Judi Lynn]

By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | March 7, 2019 06:57am ET

- click for image -

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Oxygen is getting pumped into Earth's liquid outer core.
Credit: Shutterstock

BOSTON — Earth's vast magma oceans, roiling deep beneath our feet, seem to be pumping oxygen into the planet's liquid core. And that oxygen is shaping earthquakes and volcanoes all over our planet.

That's the conclusion of a body of research University College London physicist Dario Alfe presented Tuesday (March 5) here at the March meeting of the American Physical Society. Though it's impossible to observe oxygen in the Earth's core directly — thousands of miles of hot rock impede that view — Alfe and his collaborators used a combination of seismological data, chemistry and knowledge about the ancient history of our solar system to draw their conclusions.

The main bit of evidence that something like oxygen is hiding out in the iron core? Earthquakes. The rumblings we feel on the surface are the result of waves that move throughout our entire planet. And the behavior of those waves offers clues to Earth's contents — almost like an ultrasound of the whole planet.

When earthquake waves bounce off the core and back to the surface, their shape indicates that the liquid iron outer core is significantly less dense than the pressurized solid iron core inside it. And that density difference impacts the shape of earthquakes and the behavior of volcanoes on the surface. But that's not how pure iron should behave, Alfe told Live Science after his talk. [In Photos: Ocean Hidden Beneath Earth's Surface]

More:
https://www.livescience.com/64940-pressurized-oxygen-earth-core.html

[packman]

1. So Mother Earth belches and farts - cool

[Hortensis]

2. Oh, my...shades of B movies that ate L.A.!

I must have been one of the few who really enjoyed the movie "Volcano!" with Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche. We still lived there then and volcanoes were on the extremely short list of natural disasters we didn't worry about. Sp watching one absurdly be born in the streets I walked and drove was silly entertainment.

I thought. I suppose this, though, means magma could instead engulf us here in a Florida marsh, where the Floridian Aquifer is what currently breaks through to the surface. It'll start with the biggest and fastest sinkhole ever, of course...

Thanks, Judilynn.

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