Lately, it seems like every other day there is amazing scientific news that leaves us speechless.
First there was the discovery of a terrifying black hole that was pointing straight at us, then a huge hole was discovered in the Sun and the second largest blue hole in the world was found off the Mexican coast.
Now, people have just realized that there is a huge ocean hidden under the earth’s crust.
It turns out that there is a huge reserve of water 400 miles underground stored in a rock known as “ringwoodite.”
Scientists have discovered that water is stored in mantle rock in a spongy state, which is neither liquid, solid nor gas, but a fourth state.
The scientific article titled “Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle” It was published in 2014 and presented the findings.
“Ringwoodite is like a sponge, it absorbs water, there is something very special about the crystalline structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water,” geophysicist Steve Jacobsen said at the time.
“This mineral can contain a lot of water under deep mantle conditions,” added Jacobsen, who was part of the team responsible for the discovery.
He added: “I think we are finally seeing evidence of an Earth-wide water cycle, which may help explain the large amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet.” “Scientists have been searching for this missing deep water for decades.”
The blue ringwoodite material.
(Joseph Smyth/University of Hawaii)
Scientists made the findings at the time after studying earthquakes and discovering that seismometers captured shock waves beneath the Earth’s surface.
From there, they were able to establish that the water was retained in the rock known as ringwoodite.
If the rock contained only 1% water, it would mean that there is three times more water beneath the Earth’s surface than in the surface oceans.
