Earth’s Core is Leaking

In Earth’s primordial days, liquid iron fell through the ball of magma that was our planet, collecting elements–like ruthenium-100–that are attracted to iron. All of that material ended up in Earth’s outer core, a dense sea of liquid metal that geoscientists assumed was unable to cross into the lighter mantle. But recent observations suggest instead that core material is making its way to the surface.

Measurements from volcanic rocks in the Galapagos Islands, Hawai’i, and Canada’s Baffin Island all contain ruthenium isotopes associated with that primordial core material, indicating that that magma came from the core, not the mantle. Separately, seismic analyses suggest that this material could be crossing through continent-sized blobs of warm, large-grained crystals caught deep below Africa and the Pacific, at the boundary between the mantle and the outer core. For more, check out this Quanta Magazine article. (Image credit: B. Andersen; research credit: N. Messling et al. and S. Talavera-Soza et al.; via Quanta)