Earth’s core mystery closer to a solution

Japanese scientists said that silicon is likely the mystery element in the Earth’s inner core, claiming progress on solving one of the planet’s deepest secrets.

Consensus has long been that the center of the planet is composed of about 85 percent iron and 10 percent nickel, with sulfur, oxygen andsiliconprimecandidates for the other five percent.

But geophysicist Eiji Ohtani from Tohoku University in Japan said that silicon is the most likely candidate.

Ohtani’s team conducted experiments on iron-nickel alloys mixed with silicon, subjecting them in the lab to the kinds of high temperatures and pressure found in the inner core. It discovered that the data for the mixed material observed with X-rays matched seismic data — namely, sound velocity, or seismic waves — obtained for the inner core.

“Our latest experiments suggest that the remaining five percent of the inner core iscomposedmostlyofsilicon,” OhtanisaidonWednesday.

The finding will help understand whether the Earth’s surface was rich in oxygen in its early formation before photosynthesis began as oxygen has been another potential candidate for the mystery element in the Earth’s inner core.

Some scientists said that if the Earth’s inner core contains silicon, then it means the rest of the planet must have been relatively oxygen rich at the time of its formation, because oxygen that theybelieveexistedwhenthe planet was formed was not confined to the inner core.

But if the mystery element in the core is oxygen then the rest of the Earth was oxygenpoor in the beginning.

Ohtani said he does not think oxygen now exists in the inner core, citing the difficulty for silicon and oxygen to coexist in the same place.

The Earth is believed to be madeupofthreemainlayers: The solid outer layer where creatures including humans live, the mantle which is made up of hot magma and other semisolid materials, and the core at the center.

Thecorecomprisesanouter layer of liquid iron and nickel, and an inner layer — a hot dense ball of mostly iron.

TED ALJIBE / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Protester Remedios Dayalino (second right) is joined by fellow “comfort women” at a demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Manila.