Latest news with #Messling
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hawaii's volcanic rocks offer proof that Earth's core is leaking gold, study finds
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Gold and other precious metals are leaking from Earth's core into the layers above, eventually making their way up to the surface during the formation of volcanic islands like Hawaii, a new study suggests. The theory results from a three-year analysis of Hawaii's basaltic rocks, which originally formed from plumes of magma, or molten rock, rising from the ocean floor. Clues in the form of heavy metals found in the volcanic rocks could confirm a suspicion long held by geologists — that Earth's molten core is not isolated but likely bleeds into the rocky mantle, the layer between the planet's thin crust and the core. 'About 40 years ago, people first came up with the theory that maybe the core is losing some material into the mantle, but the signals we got so far were really ambiguous,' said Nils Messling, a geochemist at the University of Göttingen in Germany and lead author of the report, published May 21 in the journal Nature. 'Now, in my opinion, we have the first very strong evidence that some of the core is actually ending up in the mantle.' Scientists already knew that most of the gold on the planet — more than 99.95%, according to Messling — lies hidden in the molten core, along with other heavy elements such as platinum. As meteorites bombarded one another in Earth's early history, a reservoir of these precious metals developed when the core formed about 4.5 billion years ago. But this study suggests that at least a tiny amount of that gold has escaped to the surface, raising the fascinating prospect that, if the leaking continues, more and more of this precious metal could travel from the center of Earth to the crust in the future. 'Our findings not only show that the Earth's core is not as isolated as previously assumed. We can now also prove that huge volumes of super-heated mantle material — several hundreds of quadrillion metric tonnes of rock — originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the Earth's surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii,' said study coauthor Matthias Willbold, a professor at the University of Göttingen, in a statement. To find evidence of this core-mantle interaction, Messling and his coauthors obtained some samples of Hawaiian volcanic rocks form the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. 'Some were taken by a submarine, from a deep sea volcano, but (otherwise) it's basically just very ordinary-looking basaltic rock, very unassuming, that you would find anywhere on Hawaii,' he said. 'We started with half a kilogram (1.1 pounds) of rock, we crushed it into a powder, and then we melted it in the oven with some different chemicals, to end up with a sample in liquid form.' From that sample, the team extracted all the elements in the platinum group, which includes platinum itself as well as the lesser-known rhodium, palladium, iridium, osmium and ruthenium. The scientists then focused on ruthenium, a silver-gray metal about as rare in Earth's crust as gold. 'The mantle has almost no ruthenium in it,' Messling said. 'It's one of the rarest elements on Earth. But Earth is basically made of meteorites that crashed together, and meteorites (contain) ruthenium, which went into the core when the core formed. So the mantle has next to no ruthenium, and the core has all of the ruthenium. The same with gold and platinum.' Earth's core has two layers. A hot, solid metal sphere of iron and nickel is roughly 70% the size of the moon, with a radius of about 759 miles (1,221 kilometers). A liquid metal outer core is about 1,400 miles (2,253 kilometers) thick and extends to about 1,800 miles (2,897 kilometers) below the surface, or right up to the mantle. In contrast, the mantle, which lies between the planet's outer crust and the molten core, is 1,800 miles (2,897 kilometers) of mostly solid rock. To determine whether the extracted ruthenium was originally from the core and not the mantle, the team looked at a specific isotope, or type, of ruthenium that was likely more abundant in Earth's early building materials during the time the core formed billions of years ago. 'The vast majority of gold and other precious metals like platinum were likely delivered by massive meteorite impacts during the final stages of Earth's formation — a process known as late accretion,' said Pedro Waterton, an assistant professor of geochemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who was not involved in the study. The presence of the ruthenium isotope in the basalt samples indicates that at least some of the rock was formed from material coming from the molten metallic core. That's because there is consensus, Messling said, that the material that coalesced during the early stages of Earth's formation does not exist in the meteorite record anymore. He added that the isotope signature in rocks from hotspot volcanoes like the ones in Hawaii is entirely different from any other known rock or meteorite. In other words, the ruthenium isotope Messling found was locked away in the core billions of years ago, so detecting the isotope in volcanic rocks today suggests it comes from the core. 'It's quite a novel and difficult method,' Messling said. 'We managed to measure ruthenium in rocks that have next to no ruthenium in them. In half a kilo (1.1 pounds) of rock, it was less than milligrams — a needle in a planet-sized haystack! That's quite exciting — for a geochemist, at least. It was a long but very exciting process.' So what's the connection with gold? It's chemically similar to ruthenium, Messling said, so if the core is leaking ruthenium, it is also leaking gold in similar quantities. This would be a 'minuscule' amount, however. And even if scientists wanted to extract gold directly from the source, the core-mantle boundary, that's much farther down than current technology could drill. In fact, it's about 236 times deeper than the deepest bore ever drilled — the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, which reaches a depth of 7.62 miles (12.3 kilometers). Proof that the core isn't isolated is particularly thrilling because the core and the mantle shouldn't interact at all, Messling said. 'Their density is too different, like oil and water, so technically they shouldn't mix. And we still don't have a good mechanism to explain why they do. We don't really know much about the core at all,' he said. The Hawaiian rock samples suggest that the leaking process takes between 500 million and 1 billion years to complete, Messling said. 'It's something that has occurred a while ago, and we suspect that it probably has been going on forever, and it's probably still occurring now,' he explained. According to Messling, if the leaking of precious metals is an ongoing process, it could be that at least some of the gold humans have mined may have come from the core even if the quantity of core material in a single rock is negligible, and that the world's supply of gold seems to be replenishing. 'It's a very interesting idea that, although this process is tiny and has zero effect if you look at just one island, if you scale it up to 4.5 billion years it could be that it changes the composition of the Earth,' he said. Researchers who were not involved in the study expressed positive views on the findings. 'We know that the Earth was built from different generations of meteoritic material that were added progressively to the growing planet, and that precious metals from the earliest generations of meteorite material became concentrated into our planet's core while metals from meteorites added in the final stages of the Earth's growth became stranded in our planet's mantle,' said Helen Williams, a professor of geochemistry and planetary science at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. The study, she added, confirms that the mantle plumes — rising jets of molten rock coming from the core-mantle boundary that create hot spots like Hawaii — do indeed contain material somehow derived from Earth's metallic core, said Williams, adding that the result was 'exciting.' Jesse Reimink, an associate professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, agrees. 'This is a very old debate, and new data over the past 10 or so years has reinvigorated the possibility that the core was chemically 'leaking' into the mantle over time,' he said. 'This study really does seem to nail the conclusion — the core does contribute some material to the mantle.' The latest research also strengthens the case made in previous work that some mantle plumes incorporate material from Earth's core, said the University of Copenhagen's Waterton. Does that also mean some of the gold in Earth's crust is originally from the core? 'Yes, but probably only a very small amount,' he said.
Newsweek
6 days ago
- Science
- Newsweek
Gold Erupts From Hawaiian Volcanoes, Scientists Discover
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. There's gold in them thar hills—or, at least, in the volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands—along with other precious metals. This is the conclusion of an international team of researchers who found evidence that metals are leaking from Earth's core into the mantle, before being erupted at the surface. "When the results first came in, we realized that we had literally struck gold," said paper author and geochemist Nils Messling of Göttingen University, Germany, in a statement. "Our data confirmed that material from the core—including gold and other precious metals—is leaking into Earth's mantle above." According to the researchers, more than 99.999 percent of Earth's total reserves of gold and other precious metals lie within our planet's metallic core—buried beneath some 1,864 miles of rock. A volcanic eruption at Kilauea, Hawaii. A volcanic eruption at Kilauea, Hawaii. wellesenterprises/Stock / Getty Images Plus In their study, Messling and colleagues found traces of one particular precious metal—ruthenium (Ru)—that their analysis indicates must have come from Earth's core. Compared with the mantle, the team explains, Earth's core has a greater abundance of one particular ruthenium isotope: 100Ru. The reason for this is that the ruthenium that ended up locked up in the core when it formed some 4.5 billion years ago (along with gold and other precious metals) came from a different source than the tiny amount of the element that can be found in the mantle today. It had long been impossible to distinguish these differences in ruthenium isotope concentrations—until the advent of new methods, developed at Göttingen, which revealed unusually high 100Ru signals in the Hawaiian lavas. Paper co-author and Göttingen geochemist professor Matthias Willbold said in a statement: "Our findings not only show that Earth's core is not as isolated as previously assumed. "We can now also prove that huge volumes of superheated mantle material—several hundreds of quadrillion metric tons of rock—originate at the core–mantle boundary and rise to Earth's surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii." The findings, the researchers explain, mean that at least some of our valued but limited supplies of gold and other precious metals may have come from the Earth's core. "Whether these processes that we observe today have also been operating in the past remains to be proven," Messling said. He concluded: "Our findings open up an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the inner dynamics of our home planet." Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about geology? Let us know via science@ Reference Messling, N., Willbold, M., Kallas, L., Elliott, T., Fitton, J. G., Müller, T., & Geist, D. (2025). Ru and W isotope systematics in ocean island basalts reveals core leakage. Nature.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Earth's Core Holds a Vast Reservoir of Gold, And It's Leaking Toward The Surface
Earth's core is rich with gold, and it's leaking out through the mantle and into the crust, new research has found. A new study of isotopes found in the volcanic rock that oozed out from deep under the lithosphere has revealed precious metals in Earth's crust, including gold, initially leaked out of the core before beginning the long, long journey up to the surface, borne on convecting magma. "When the first results came in, we realized that we had literally struck gold!" says geochemist Nils Messling of Göttingen University in Germany. "Our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the Earth's mantle above." Although we can access gold in Earth's crust, the amount there is an estimated minuscule fraction of the total quantity that our planet possesses. Like a dragon, Earth is hoarding most of its gold: research suggests more than 99 percent is in its metallic core – enough to cover all of Earth's land in gold 50 centimeters (20 inches) thick. It makes sense: when still forming, the heavier elements sank down through the planet's mooshy interior and ended up sequestered in the differentiated core, a process known as the iron catastrophe. Later, meteor bombardment delivered more gold and heavy metals to the crust. Although we have good evidence that primordial helium and heavy iron isotopes are leaking from Earth's core, it's been unclear how much of the heavy metal we find on the surface is from the core and how much is from space. There is, however, a way to investigate: isotopes of a precious heavy metal called ruthenium. Isotopes are variations of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons. The isotopes of ruthenium in Earth's core are slightly different from surface ruthenium. That difference had been too small to really detect, but Messling and his colleagues developed new analysis techniques that allowed them to tease them out. They used their new techniques to study ruthenium that was dug out of volcanic rock on the Hawaiian islands, and discovered a significantly higher amount of ruthenium-100 than can be found in the ambient mantle. That's the isotope of ruthenium that originated in Earth's core. This discovery suggests that all the siderophile elements – those that migrated to the core when the Earth was young and molten all the way through – are leaking out of the core. That includes ruthenium, of course, but also elements such as palladium, rhodium, platinum – and gold. It won't be emerging at a particularly high rate, nor can we just dig down 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) to get it. Rather, the finding tells us something new about our own planet, and perhaps other rocky planets, too. "Our findings not only show that the Earth's core is not as isolated as previously assumed," says geochemist Matthias Willbold of Göttingen University. "We can now also prove that huge volumes of superheated mantle material – several hundred quadrillion metric tons of rock – originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the Earth's surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii." The research has been published in Nature. Mesmerizing Video Shows Cardiac Cells Building a Heart Scientists Peered Inside The Echidna's Mysterious 'Pseudo-Pouch' Bizarre Three-Eyed Predator Hunted The Ocean Half a Billion Years Ago
