Scientists recreate the hellish conditions of the Earth's core in a California lab

• Iron squeezed to 17m times surface presure in 'diamond anvil'
• First simulation of how metal behaves at core of earth
• Could help understand why planet formed - and how 'geodynamo' that powers earth's magnetic field works

By Rob Waugh

Last updated at 8:57 PM on 21st December 2011

Understanding what happens at the core of our planet would help scientists understand how our planet formed - and why its magnetic fields behave as they do.

Scientists have known for many years that iron is the main element in the core - but have known nothing about how the element might behave at the horrifically high pressure inside our planet.

A team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology compressed iron between two diamonds - crushing it to pressures 17 million times the level we feel on the surface.

Scientists have known for many years that iron is the main element in the core - but have known nothing about how the element might behave at the horrifically high pressure inside our planet

'Pinpointing the properties of iron is crucial to understanding how the core behaves,' says Jennifer Jackson, assistant professor of mineral physics at Caltech.

'That is where most discussions about the deep interior of the earth begin. The temperature distribution, the formation of the planet?it all goes back to the core.'

The team used 'Diamond Anvil Cells' to crush tiny samples of the metal between two diamonds - then used X-rays to measure how they vibrated, comparing the results to seismic measurements of the core.

The results found that iron melts at 5,500 degrees centigrade in the core - and this could help understand what impurities are present at the heart of our planet, and how the 'geodynamo' that powers the magnetic field works.

The results found that iron melts at 5,500 degrees centigrade in the core - and this could help understand what impurities are present at the heart of our planet, and how the 'geodynamo' that powers the magnetic field works

The team was also able to get a closer estimate of the melting point of iron from their experiments?which they report to be around 5800 Kelvin at the boundary between the earth's solid inner core and liquid outer core.

This information, combined with the other vibrational properties they found, gives the group important clues for estimating the amount of impurities, in the core.

By comparing the density of the iron in the lab - at the same pressure and temperature conditions with seismic observations of the core's density, they found that iron is 5.5 percent more dense than the solid inner core at this boundary.

'With our new data on iron, we can discuss several aspects of the earth's core with more certainty and narrow down the amount of impurities that may be needed to help power the geodynamo?the process responsible for maintaining the earth's magnetic field, which originates in the core,' says Jackson.

'There are a few candidate light elements for the core that everyone is always talking about?sulfur, silicon, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen, for instance,' says Murphy. 'Silicon and oxygen are a few of the more popular, but they have not been studied in this great of detail yet. So that's where we will begin to expand our study.'

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Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077013/Scientists-recreate-hellish-conditions-Earths-core-California-lab.html?ITO=1490

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