If you look at the world map, you would think that mankind has discovered all the seas and oceans that make up our planet for a long time. However, only a decade has passed since scientists discovered a vast ocean that is three times larger than all the seas above land.
That being the case, we are very lucky that this vast ocean, which was only discovered in 2014, is hidden beneath the Earth’s crust, otherwise we would all be underwater by now. Buried over 400 kilometers below the Earth’s mantle, there is a blue rock known as “ringwoodite” and this is where the water is hidden.
According to New Scientist, the discovery of the new ocean has helped shed some light on our world’s water, as some geologists thought it arrived in comets that hit the planet, but this discovery supports the idea that our oceans instead pre-existed. .
Steve Jacobsen, a geophysicist who was part of the discovery of this amazing subterranean ocean, said it was “good evidence that Earth’s water comes from the inside”.
He said: “Ringwood is like a sponge, it absorbs water, there is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water. This mineral can hold a lot of water under deep mantle conditions.”
It takes longer for the wave to pass through wet rock for them to actually notice it slowing down, and Jacobsen already understood what would happen if the wave encountered the water contained in ringwood – which can contain up to 1.5 percent. Thanks to this, a team managed to discover that the largest ocean on Earth is actually hidden beneath the surface of our planet.
At the time, Jacobsen said: “I think we’re finally seeing evidence of an Earth-wide water cycle that could help explain the vast amount of liquid water on the surface of our habitable planet.” Scientists have been searching for this missing deep water for decades.”
There it is – there’s another ocean below us, and Jacobson and his team want to determine if it envelops the entire Earth.
