The core of the earth licks gold

In contrast to conspiracy theories, the earth core is not hollow. Instead, the dense, hot ball contains a stew precision metals such as platinum, ruthenium and pretty much the entire gold of the planet. As lucrative, it sounds, there is essentially no way that humanity will ever access this natural treasure chest, which is buried under more than 1,850 feet of solid rock. After the recent discoveries made in Hawai'i in Hawai'i, the traces of some of these coveted metals seep away from the deepest ranges of the planet.

“When the first results came, we found that we had literally hit gold,” said Nils Messling, geochemist at Göttingen University. “Our data confirmed that the material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, exceeds the top of the ground.”

Messling and employees explained their results in a study published on May 21st in the journal Nature. The team recently recognized trace quantities of the precious metal ruthenium and analyzed volcanic rock samples that were collected on the islands of Hawai'i. In particular, they found the unexpected presence of the ruthenium isotope ¹⁰⁰ru.

The keyword is “unexpectedly”. While ¹⁰⁰ru exists in the earth's mantle, it is essentially a bit more rich – overall ideas 99.999 percent of the gold of the planet and other precious metals. This is because during the formation of the planet about 4.5 billion years ago, part of the ruthenium, which is locked up in the earth core, comes from another source than the small amount that was found in the coat today. The discrepancies between these two forms of ruthenium are so low that the devices used by geologists to examine these isotopes were unable to distinguish them from each other.

Researchers at Göttingen University in the Netherlands recently developed new isotopic analysis methods that enabled them to do exactly that. When distinguishing between these two types of the same isotopes, the team found that some of the volcanic basalts of Hawaii contain an unusually high signal from ¹⁰⁰ru, which means that it dates from the vicinity of the core coat.

The effects are significant: the core of the earth, as soon as they consider it inaccessible, are ejected at least small quantities towards the surface during volcanic outbreaks.

“We can now also prove that huge volumes of overstated mantle materials originate hundreds of billions of tons of rock-to-core mantle boundary and ascend to the earth's surface to form ocean Islands like Hawaii,” added the co-authorin Matthias Wilbold.

The question now is not now If This unexpected process happens – it is a question from If and when It happened in the past.

“Our results open up a completely new perspective on the development of the inner dynamics of our home planet,” added Messling.