New Model Shows Earth’s Deep Mantle Was Drier From the Start Earth’s mantle is the thick layer of silicate rock between Earth’s crust and its molten core. It makes up about 84% of our planet’s volume. Although the mantle is predominantly solid, on geologic time scales, it behaves as a viscous fluid
Scientists have determined that Earth’s ancient plume mantle had a water concentration that was a factor of 4 to 250 times lower when compared with the water concentration of the upper mantle. The resulting viscosity contrast could have prevented mixing within the mantle, which would help explain certain long-standing mysteries about Earth’s formation and evolution.Earth’s mantle is the thick layer of silicate rock between Earth’s crust and its molten core.
By analyzing noble gas isotope data, Parai determined that the ancient plume mantle had a water concentration that was a factor of 4 to 250 times lower when compared with the water concentration of the upper mantle. “A primordial viscosity contrast may explain why the giant impacts that triggered whole-mantle magma oceans did not homogenize the growing planet,” said Parai, who is a faculty fellow of the university’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. “It also could explain why the plume mantle has experienced less processing by partial melting over Earth history.”
She found that mantle helium, neon, and xenon isotopes require that the plume mantle had low concentrations of volatiles like Xe and water at the end of that period of accretion, compared with the upper mantle. The upper mantle may have benefited from a larger contribution of mass from volatile-rich materials similar to a class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites.
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