High-pressure geophysics and materials

Rocks and minerals behave in ways that are difficult to anticipate once subjected to the extreme pressures and temperatures found hundreds of kilometers beneath Earth's surface, and understanding those behaviors is central to explaining how our planet works. Researchers combine high-pressure laboratory experiments, computational crystal structure prediction, and seismic tomography — which uses earthquake waves as a kind of X-ray to image the deep interior — to map the phases and properties of materials that make up Earth's mantle and core. A persistent open question is how water, locked inside hydrous minerals carried down by subducting tectonic plates, alters mantle dynamics and influences everything from volcanic activity to the long-term cycling of volatiles between the surface and deep Earth. At the same time, unexpected phenomena such as pressure-induced superconductivity in candidate mantle materials have pushed the field toward closer collaboration between geophysicists and condensed-matter physicists.

Works

178,535

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2,677,986

Keywords

Mantle DynamicsCrystal Structure PredictionHigh-pressure PhasesSeismic ImagingSuperconductivityEarth's Lower Mantle