Suara.com – a Diamond drawn from deep beneath the earth’s surface, scientists have discovered the first examples of mineral never seen before and mysterious.
Named davemaoite after leading geophysicist Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao, this mineral is the first example of high-pressure calcium silicate perovskite (CaSiO3) found on Earth.
Another form of CaSiO3, known as wollastonite, is commonly found worldwide, but davemaoite has a crystalline structure that forms only under high pressure and high temperatures in the Earth’s mantle, the solid layer of Earth trapped between the outer core and the crust.
Davemaoite has long been expected to be an abundant and geochemically important mineral in the Earth’s mantle.
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But scientists have never found direct evidence of its existence because it breaks down into other minerals as it moves to the surface and the pressure is reduced.
However, analysis of the diamond from Botswana, which forms in the mantle about 410 miles (660 kilometers) below the Earth’s surface, has revealed intact davemaoite samples trapped within it.
As a result, the International Mineralogical Association has now confirmed davemaoite as a new mineral.
“The discovery of davemaoite came as a surprise,” lead author Oliver Tschauner, a mineralogist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told Live Science. Space, Wednesday (17/11/2021).
Tschauner and his colleagues discovered davemaoite samples with a technique known as synchrotron X-ray diffraction, which focuses high-energy X-ray beams at specific points within the diamond with microscopic precision.
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“By measuring the angle and intensity of the light returning, researchers can decipher what’s inside,” said Tschauner.
The davemaoite sample in a diamond is only a few micrometers (millionths of a meter) across, so less robust sampling techniques will miss it.
Davemaoite is believed to play an important geochemical role in the Earth’s mantle.
Scientists theorize that the mineral may also contain other trace elements, including uranium and thorium, which release heat through radioactive decay.
Therefore, davemaoite could help generate large amounts of heat in the mantle, Tschauner said.
In a 2014 study published in the journal Science, researchers described another theoretical high-pressure mineral from the mantle, known as bridgmanite.
However, the bridgmanite samples did not come from the mantle but from inside meteorites.
The discovery of davemaoite suggests that diamonds could have formed further in the mantle than previously thought.
According to Tschauner, this suggests that they may be the best place to look for more new minerals from the mantle.
“The work by Tschauner et al. inspires hope in the discovery of other difficult high-pressure phases in nature,” Yingwei Fe, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, who was not involved in the study, wrote in the article. Science related.
According to him, direct sampling of the inaccessible lower mantle would fill a gap in our knowledge in the chemical composition of our entire planet’s mantle.
The study was published online on November 11 in the journal Science.
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