Oxygen is the essential substance for life and one of the most abundant elements on planet Earth.
The amount of this element in the atmosphere is what makes Earth a habitable planet.
It is still not known whether oxygen exists in places other than the atmosphere, such as the Earth's core, whose core is mainly iron, where extremely high pressure and high temperature conditions prevail.
According to a study published in the journal "The Innovation", an international team headed by the Center for High Pressure Science & Technology Advanced Research in China revealed that oxygen may be available in a large amount in the inner core. Earth, which would help in a deeper understanding of the process of formation of the Earth's core and the history of its development, and this discovery will have implications for knowledge of the signals resulting from earthquakes.
The solid inner core of the Earth is one of the most mysterious places on the planet (Getty Images)
Mysterious core
According to the press release issued by the center - and published on the "Phys.org" website - the solid inner core of the Earth is one of the most mysterious places on the planet, and it is at the most extreme temperature and pressure on Earth, with a pressure of more than 300 gigapascals, and a temperature of about 6,000 Kelvin.
Because the inner core is so far out of reach for humans, scientists infer its density and chemical composition from seismic signals generated by earthquakes.
At present, light elements, especially those water-bearing minerals, are believed to be present in the inner core, but the type and content of these elements are still subject to debate, but cosmological and geochemical evidence indicates that it contains sulfur, silicon, carbon, and hydrogen.
Experiments and calculations have also confirmed that these elements mix with pure iron to form iron oxide (Feo), under high temperatures and high pressure conditions deep in the earth, and for this reason oxygen is usually excluded from the inner core, mainly due to the fact that iron oxides, with the same compositions Iron-rich are never found in surface or mantle environments.
On the other hand, the statement indicates that the oxygen content in all known iron oxides is very large, equal to 50% atomic, which is what the new study relied on, which concluded that the Earth's core is rich in oxygen.
Iron oxides, with iron-rich compositions, have never been found in surface or mantle environments (Getty Images)
Is the inner core really rich in oxygen?
According to a previous study by a scientific team from the University of Tokyo, Japan, published by the journal "Nature", hydrogen greatly affects the properties of many materials, as it is believed that most of the hydrogen found on the planet recently is found in water molecules, many of which form carrier minerals. for water.
Therefore, it is very important to understand the stability and cycle of such water minerals in the ground, so this need has led to conducting many studies of water minerals under high pressure and high temperature.
In the study, published in the journal Nature, the researchers report that oxygen-rich iron oxide is stable at pressures greater than about 76 gigapascals, and that this substance may enable previously unknown cycles of hydrogen and oxygen in the Earth's mantle.
That is why, according to the press release, and in order to approach the temperature and pressure of the heart, the researchers in the new study placed pure iron and iron oxide on the tips of a diamond anvil and heated them with a high-energy laser beam, and after many attempts, the researchers found that a chemical reaction occurs between iron and iron oxide Iron.
As the results of this laboratory experiment reveal, iron-rich iron oxide can exist stably at about 200 gigapascals.
Under these conditions, the iron-rich iron oxide forms a hexagonal structure, with oxygen layers arranged between the iron layers.
Thus, according to this experiment, which showed the formation of iron oxide, due to extremely high pressure and high temperature conditions, in addition to the availability of water-bearing minerals in the Earth's core, this is what makes scientists expect the presence of oxygen in abundance in the Earth's interior.