A U.S. study suggests minerals subjected to intense pressure near the Earth’s core lose much of their ability to conduct infrared light.
And scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Geophysical Laboratory say since infrared light contributes to the flow of heat, the result challenges some long-held notions about heat transfer in the lower mantle — the layer of molten rock that surrounds the Earth’s solid core.
Carnegie researchers Alexander Goncharov and Viktor Struzhkin, with postdoctoral fellow Steven Jacobsen, say their findings might aid the study of mantle plumes — large columns of hot upwelling magma believed to produce features such as the Hawaiian Islands and Iceland.
The research appears in the journal Science.
