"Rivers of oxygen" in the bowels of the Earth. Bashny.Net

Russian and German physicists and geologists have discovered a previously unknown layer in the Earth's mantle, which contains a huge amount of liquid oxygen, experimenting with laser pressom- "anvil" in German Synchrotron DESY center of what they told in his article in the journal Nature Communications.

"According to our estimates, this layer contains about 8-10 times more oxygen than Earth's atmosphere. It was a big surprise for us, and we do not know what's going on with these "rivers of oxygen" in the bowels of the planet, "- said Elena Bykova at the University of Bayreuth (Germany)

. Bykov and her colleagues found an unexpected source and oxygen accumulation in the bowels of the earth, watching the behavior of various types of iron oxide, a major component of the underlying rocks, at different temperatures and pressures.

As explained by scientists under normal conditions in the earth iron oxide is hematite rocks - connection of the two iron atoms and three oxygen atoms. In recent years, according to Bykov, chemists and physicists discovered several new "versions" of iron oxide, which form at high pressures and temperatures and contain a number of exotic atoms - Fe4O5, Fe5O6, or for example, Fe13O19
The authors found that this list of the iron oxides is not limited to, ensure that the behavior of hematite and "magnetic" namesake magnetite, of Fe3O4, in conditions close to the core and mantle, pressing them with a laser, "vise» PETRA III to a pressure above atmospheric of 670 thousand times.

This operation led to the degradation of hematite and the formation of a new exotic iron oxide, Fe5O7, at pressures and temperatures corresponding to a depth of 1,500 kilometers. Further compression led to the formation of yet another unknown oxide, Fe25O32. Both the researchers tell resulted in the release of huge masses of oxygen, which is at such a depth and at such a pressure is not converted into a gas and a liquid.

Streams of liquid, according to the bulls and her colleagues often flows through the mantle in those of its points where deposits of magnetite and hematite were formed on the sea floor, "flow" along with the rest of the mantle matter and cortex in the direction of the earth's core.

The fate of this oxygen is not known - oxygen data "river" can equally interact with the surrounding rocks and oxidize them, and climb into the higher layers of the mantle and even higher

. In any case, the presence of oxygen, as noted by Maxim Bykov, one of the other authors, says that in the bowels of the earth may be the most complex and active chemical processes, the existence of which we do not know, and that may affect not only the geochemistry but also on the climate and the state of the planet's atmosphere.