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Earth's Crust Might Contain Water In Abundance

By Kamal Nayan | Update Date: Mar 16, 2014 12:24 AM EDT

Researchers have found a rare diamond which hints the possibility that beneath the planet's crust there is an ocean's worth of water. The rare diamond is believed to have survived a trip from deep within the Earth's interior. 

The diamond that is battered-looking was found from Brazil and contained a water-rich inclusion of the olivine mineral ringwoodite. The presence of such evidences clearly hints that there is a very large amount of water held in the transition zone of the Earth's mantle. 

Researchers believed that the samples that are found from the transition zone are considered to be "exceedingly rare." 

"That may not sound like much," Graham Pearson, a mantle geochemist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton said, according to Independent, "but when you realize how much ringwoodite there is, the transition zone could hold as much water as all the Earth's oceans put together."

"It's actually the confirmation that there is a very, very large amount of water that's trapped in a really distinct layer in the deep Earth," Mr Pearson added.

Researchers said their discovery was almost accidental as the team was looking for another mineral.

Other experts believed that the results taken from one single crystal might not represent the entire transition zone.

"It would be unwise to assume that all the gravel in the stream is gold nuggets," encountered a geophysicist at Stanford University in California, according to Independent.

"We have to think really carefully on what we do next on this sample because it's very small: 40 micrometres," Pearson said. "That means you can only think of doing one or two additional analyses."

The found diamond weighed just one-tenth of a gram.

The study has been published in the journal Nature

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