Thanks to the discovery of water trapped inside diamonds from deep underground, geologists are thinking our planet could have much more water inside than we ever knew.
Not only would this require a slight recalculation of the total amount of water our planet happens to hold, it would change how we model everything from the way heat moves through the crust to models predicting the frequency of earthquakes.
Researchers made the find by analysing the way X-rays diffracted through diamonds collected from southern Africa, China, Zaire, and Sierra Leone.
The water molecules found in these diamonds were squeezed into a solid form of ice, but they represent briny pools of liquid water that would be trapped in rocks far, far down – below a section of the mantle called the transition zone. Read more
Loading ...