Deep Earth is enveloped in mantle ocean

摘要

THE deep Earth holds about the same amount of water as our oceans. That's the conclusion from experiments on rocks typical of those in the mantle transition zone, a layer 410 to 660 kilometres beneath us that separates the upper from the lower mantle. "If our estimation is correct, it means there's a large amount of water in the deep Earth," says Hongzhan Fei at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. "The total amount of water there is nearly the same as the mass of all the world's ocean water."