This is how gold and platinum enter the Earth's mantle

Researchers in the United States of America have made a crucial discovery. Its purpose is to explain why there is so much gold and platinum in the Earth's mantle.

NEW HAVEN – Gold and platinum are some of the most sought-after precious metals in the world. This is due to their usefulness for technical products, their rarity and aesthetics. It is estimated that there are about 30 billion tons of gold in the Earth's mantle. This is bewilderingly high. Researchers have long wondered why this is.

Gold and platinum: must be found underground

In fact, it would make more sense if the minerals accumulated in the Earth's interior rather than in the Earth's mantle. After all, they belong to the so-called iron-loving or “iron-loving” elements. Therefore it is assumed that These metals are attracted to the iron found in the ground Hence they exist primarily there. But this is not the case.

Scientists Jun Kurinaga and Simon Marchi from Yale University in the USA have made crucial research progress in this area. Their study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The publication offers potential answers to the question of why platinum, gold and other precious metals are found in the Earth's mantle and not deep in the Earth's interior.

Gold and platinum in Earth's mantle: the transition zone provides the answers

The researchers explain in the study that it is already known that precious metals arrived on our planet billions of years ago due to the collision of the primitive Earth with celestial bodies the size of the moon. Today's Earth was formed from the material deposits left behind. Such an effect always creates a transition zone and here lies the solution to the puzzle. Korinaga and Marchi found that this region has special dynamic properties that allow falling mineral components to be efficiently captured and released slowly into the rest of the Earth's mantle.

“By working with Simon, an expert in impact dynamics, I was able to find a new solution to this puzzle,” Korenaga explains in one of the articles. press release From Yale University. He also stressed that their research is a prime example of how unexpected discoveries are possible by testing conventional wisdom. A mathematician in Frankfurt recently made an unexpected discovery: he is sure of it That Stephen Hawking was wrong in his theory about black erasers. (Law)