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Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Squeezing iron into the core after the Earth formed

High pressure experiments suggest liquid iron could flow through the mantle.

Our planet’s interior is complex and has many layers. There are many unsolved mysteries about the formation and structure of these layers, but new research is providing some clues about how Earth’s internal structure may have evolved.

If you were to take a journey to the center of the Earth, you would find that most material there is made of just three elements, at least until you get to around 3000 km below the surface. These elements—oxygen, silicon, and magnesium (plus a little bit of iron)—make up more than 90% of Earth’s “ceramic” mantle. Electrically and thermally insulating, the minerals of the mantle are the stony part of the planet.

But as you go deeper, things suddenly change. About midway to the center, you cross a boundary from the stony mantle into the metallic core, initially liquid in its upper stretches, and then solid right in the center of the Earth. The chemistry changes, too, with almost all of the core being composed of iron.

The boundary between the metallic core and the rocky mantle is a place of extremes. In physical characteristics, Earth’s metallic liquid outer core is as different from the rocky mantle as the seas are from the ocean floor. One might imagine an inverted world that has storms and currents of flowing red-hot metal in the molten outer core. It is this flow of metal in the core that gives Earth its magnetic field, protects us from the solar storms that constantly bombard us, and allows life to thrive.

How did such distinct layers of material end up next to each other? In a paper published in the Nature Geoscience, a group of scientists led by Wendy Mao of Stanford University have shown how metallic iron may be squeezed out of rocky silicates at depths of around 1000 km beneath the crust.

Nature Geoscience
Experiments on mixtures of silicate minerals and iron cooked up in the lab show that iron sits in tiny isolated lumps within the rock, remaining trapped and pinned at the junctions between the mineral grains. This observation has led to the view that iron only segregates in the early stages of planetary formation, when the upper part of the silicate mantle is fully molten. It is thought that droplets of iron rained down through the upper mantle and pooled at its base, then sank as large “diapir” driven by gravity. These fell through the deeper solid mantle to eventually form a core.



Commenting on the results, Geoffrey Bromiley of the University of Edinburgh said, “This new data suggests that we cannot assume that core formation is a simple, single-stage event. Core formation was a complex, multi-stage process which must have had an equally complex influence on the subsequent chemistry of the Earth.”




Nature Geoscience, 2013. DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1956 (About DOIs).


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