The Far East (Religion)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, September 17, 2010, 22:45 (5179 days ago) @ xeno6696

For the info direct from the horses mouth, as it were, I looked up the research paper instead of relying on the news article. -Extract p.1 of the introduction:-The lower mantle accounts for 62% of Earth&apos;s volume,&#13;&#10;so even if lower mantle minerals have low H2O solubility&#13;&#10;(< 0.1 wt%), the lower mantle may contain more water than&#13;&#10;the Earth&apos;s oceans. How much water the lower mantle can&#13;&#10;hold is a subject of some debate, and considerable discussion&#13;&#10;in this volume. Estimates for the water solubility in silicate&#13;&#10;perovskite range from a few ppm [Bolfan-Casanova et al.,&#13;&#10;2003] up to 0.2...0.4 wt% (i.e., 2000...4000 ppm H2O by&#13;&#10;weight) [Litasov et al., 2003; Murakami et al., 2002]. The&#13;&#10;water solubility for magnesiow&#195;&#188;stite (~16% of the lower&#13;&#10;mantle) is more uncertain, with measurements from zero&#13;&#10;[Bolfan-Casanova et al., 2002] to 0.2 wt% H2O [Murakami&#13;&#10;et al., 2002]. For lower mantle solubilities of 0.05 to 0.2&#13;&#10;wt%, the lower mantle may hold 1 to 5 times the water in&#13;&#10;the Earth&apos;s oceans.-&#13;&#10;The article is a good read at any rate, and might be interesting to branch out into another world of science other than biology for a bit.-Hope you enjoy.