Breaking Update: Here’s a clear explanation of the latest developments related to Breaking News:Earth’s core could hold enough hydrogen to fill 45 oceans– What Just Happened and why it matters right now.
What’s the story
A recent study has suggested that Earth’s core could be hiding huge amounts of hydrogen.
The researchers used a novel technique to estimate the element’s abundance in our planet’s innermost layer.
They found that the amount of hydrogen in the core could be equivalent to as much as 45 oceans. This would make it the largest reservoir of hydrogen on Earth.
Hydrogen makes up 0.07-0.36% of total core weight
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, estimated that hydrogen could account for about 0.07% to 0.36% of Earth’s total core weight.
This finding implies that most of the planet’s water, its main source of hydrogen, was acquired during its formation, not later through comet impacts as some scientists have suggested.
“Earth’s core would store most of the water in the first million years of Earth’s history,” said lead study author Dongyang Huang from Peking University.
Study crucial for understanding planet formation, evolution
The study of hydrogen’s origin and distribution is crucial for understanding how planets form and evolve.
Scientists have long wondered about the amount of hydrogen that could be hidden in Earth’s molten metal engine, but direct observation is impossible because of the core’s depth.
The researchers used a new technique to estimate core hydrogen by studying chemical interactions in iron under high pressure and temperature conditions similar to those found in Earth’s interior.
New technique used to estimate core hydrogen
The new technique involves sharpening samples into needlelike shapes with diameters of about 20 nanometers, then placing them under finely controlled high voltage current.
The samples’ atoms are ionized and counted one at a time.
To create the new estimate, scientists did experiments replicating core temperatures and pressures using iron as a stand-in for the liquid metal core.
They melted the iron with lasers in a high-pressure device called a diamond anvil cell.
More work needed to confirm, refine estimates
The experiments showed how hydrogen interacted with silicon and oxygen in nanostructures as the metal cooled, with a roughly 1:1 ratio of hydrogen to silicon.
By combining the observations of these ratios in the samples with prior estimates of core silicon, the researchers were able to find the amount of core hydrogen.
However, they warned that more work is needed to confirm and refine this estimate due to uncertainties associated with this indirect approach.
Core hydrogen estimates could be higher
The exact amount of core hydrogen might be much higher than the new estimate suggests, said Kei Hirose from the University of Tokyo.
One area of uncertainty is how much hydrogen in the iron samples had escaped during decompression; this loss was documented in other studies but was not included in the new calculations.
“If the authors’ measurements and hypothesis hold true, it will suggest that hydrogen was delivered throughout Earth’s growth,” said Professor Rajdeep Dasgupta from Rice University.