In recent times, it seems as though there is a mind-blowing piece of scientific news published every other day, all of which has completely blown our small little minds.
First, there was the finding of a scary black hole that was aiming directly at us; secondly, there was the discovery of a large hole found in the sun; and last, there was the discovery of a vanished continent that had been absent for more than three hundred and seventy-five years.
People are just now coming to the conclusion that there is a large ocean buried beneath the surface of the Earth’s crust.
It has been discovered that a massive amount of water has been preserved in rock known as ‘ringwoodite’ for a distance of around 400 miles underground.
The Earth’s crust contains a massive ocean with more water than on the surface.
“The ringwoodite is like a sponge, soaking up water,” geophysicist Steve Jacobsen said at the time. “There is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water,” Jacobsen added. “The ringwoodite is like a sponge, soaking up water.”
“This mineral can contain a lot of water under the conditions of the deep mantle,” stated Jacobsen, who was a part of the team that was responsible for the discovery.
He continued by saying, “I think we are finally seeing evidence for a whole-Earth water cycle, which may help explain the vast amount of liquid water that can be found on the surface of our habitable planet.” Since the 1970s, researchers have been on the hunt for this mysterious missing deep water.
After researching earthquakes and finding that seismometers were picking up shockwaves beneath the surface of the Earth, scientists came to these conclusions at the time.
Because of this, they were able to deduce that the rock with the scientific name ringwoodite was the one that was retaining the water.
Even if the rock just contained 1% water, this would imply that there is three times more water beneath the surface of the Earth than there is in the seas that are found on the surface.