- To understand the coat – the largest layer of rocky body on the earth – scientists pierce the deep nuclei of the earth.
- Scientists have pierced the deepest nucleus to date and have recovered the serpentine peridotitis which forms when salt water interacts with the rock coat.
- Although it is the deepest in the mantle that scientists have ever drilled, the mission has not revealed the virgin coat which is beyond the border of Mohorovičić, or Moho, border.
If you want to understand the geology of our original planet, studying the mantle is an excellent starting point. Separating the rocky crust from the planet and the melted external nucleus, the coat represents 70% of the land mass and 84% of its volume. But despite its disproportionate influence on the geological processes of the planet, scientists have never directly sampled the rocks of this extremely important geological layer.
And it is understandable, especially if we consider that the crust is approximately 9 to 12 miles thick on average. Fortunately, this average contains aberrant values - areas of the world where the crust is actually incredibly thin and the faults exposes the coat through cracks. One of these areas is the crest of the middle of the Atlantic, in particular near an underwater mountain called the Atlantis massif.
On the south side of this massif is an area known as the lost town – a hydrothermal field whose ventilation fluids are very alkaline and rich in hydrogen, methane and other carbon compounds. This makes the region a particularly convincing candidate to explain how the first life has evolved on Earth. In addition, it contains rock coat which interacts with sea water in a process known as “serpentinization”, which modifies the structure of the rock and gives it a green and marble appearance.
It was here, 800 meters south of this area, in May 2023 that the members of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Joint resolution, A 470 -foot long -length research ship rented by the US National Science Foundation – has extracted a 1,268 meter nucleus containing abyssal peridotites, which are the main rocks that make up the upper mantle of the earth. The results of the study were published in the newspaper Science.
Although this makes this particular drilling core, the deepest sample of the mantle to date, going to the bottom of the rock was not the purpose of this record expedition.
“We had planned to break into 200 meters, because it was the deepest people ever managed to drill in Mantle Rock,” said Johan Lissenberg, oil at the University of Cardiff and co-author of the study, said Nature. He said that the drilling was so easy that they progressed three times faster than usual. The team finally pierced 1,268 meters and only stopped because of the mission limited operations window.
Andrew McCaig – Co -author of the study and scientist of the University of Leeds – was presented in an article of The conversation that, according to a preliminary analysis of the rock, the composition of the nucleus contains a variety of peridotitis called harzburgite which forms via the partial fusion of the rock of the mantle. It also contained rocks known as Gabbros, which are rude grain igned rocks. These two rocks then reacted chemically with sea waterchange their composition.
While this nucleus represents an incredibly occasion to find out more about the Earth’s Coat, as well as to give a deepened overview of the geological A substrate on which the lost city rests, the mission has not completely finished the “great challenge” to cross the discontinuity of Mohorovičić. Otherwise known as Moho, the discontinuity of Mohorovičić is recognized as the true border between the crust and the virgin coat.
Future missions could continue to explore this site near the Atlantis massif, but unfortunately, these missions do not include Joint resolution—The NSF refused to finance More basic drilling beyond 2024. Just as scientists finally strike at the door of the most omnipresent geological layer of the earth, the future of this kind of drilling missions is now uncertain.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat and writes / modifies science fiction and the functioning of our world. You can find your previous things in Gizmodo and paste if you look strong enough.