Huge 'Ocean' Discovered Inside Earth
By Ker Than, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 28 February 2007 01:28 pm ET
www.livescience.com...
Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the
Arctic Ocean.
The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle.
The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at
the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.
Looking down deep
The pair analyzed more than 600,000 seismograms—records of waves generated by earthquakes traveling through the Earth—collected from instruments
scattered around the planet.
They noticed a region beneath Asia where seismic waves appeared to dampen, or “attenuate,” and also slow down slightly. “Water slows the speed
of waves a little,” Wysession explained. “Lots of damping and a little slowing match the predictions for water very well.”
Previous predictions calculated that if a cold slab of the ocean floor were to sink thousands of miles into the Earth’s mantle, the hot temperatures
would cause water stored inside the rock to evaporate out.
“That is exactly what we show here,” Wysession said. “Water inside the rock goes down with the sinking slab and it’s quite cold, but it heats
up the deeper it goes, and the rock eventually becomes unstable and loses its water.”
The water then rises up into the overlying region, which becomes saturated with water [image]. “It would still look like solid rock to you,”
Wysession told LiveScience. “You would have to put it in the lab to find the water in it.”
Although they appear solid, the composition of some ocean floor rocks is up to 15 percent water. “The water molecules are actually stuck in the
mineral structure of the rock,” Wysession explained. “As you heat this up, it eventually dehydrates. It’s like taking clay and firing it to get
all the water out.”
The researchers estimate that up to 0.1 percent of the rock sinking down into the Earth’s mantle in that part of the world is water, which works out
to about an Arctic Ocean’s worth of water.
“That’s a real back of the envelope type calculation,” Wysession said. “That’s the best that we can do at this point.”
The Beijing anomaly
Wysession has dubbed the new underground feature the “Beijing anomaly,” because seismic wave attenuation was found to be highest beneath the
Chinese capital city. Wysession first used the moniker during a presentation of his work at the University of Beijing.
“They thought it was very, very interesting,” Wysession said. “China is under greater seismic risk than just about any country in the world, so
they are very interested in seismology.”
Water covers 70 percent of Earth’s surface and one of its many functions is to act like a lubricant for the movement of continental plates.
“Look at our sister planet, Venus,” Wysession said. “It is very hot and dry inside Venus, and Venus has no plate tectonics. All the water
probably boiled off, and without water, there are no plates. The system is locked up, like a rusty Tin Man with no oil.”
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Genesis 7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of
the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
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Genesis 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that [was] with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the
earth, and the waters asswaged;
Genesis 8:2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
Genesis 8:3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
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Proverbs 8:27 When he prepared the heavens, I [was] there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:
Proverbs 8:28 When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep:
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Isaiah 41:18 I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry
land springs of water.
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Isa 51:10 [Art] thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to
pass over?
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videos.howstuffworks.com...
Here is a short video on geysers.
