TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - New research led by Johns Hopkins University has discovered details about carbon deep beneath Earth's surface that have been long unkown. The study suggest ways this subterranean carbon might have influenced the history of life on the planet.
Using a model created by a team consisted of Johns Hopkins geochemist Dimitri Sverjensky, Vincenzo Stagno of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Fang Huang, a Johns Hopkins graduate student, the team had become the first to calculate how much carbon and what types exist in fluids at 100 miles below Earth's surface at temperatures up to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit.
In an article published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, Sverjensky and his team demonstrate that in addition to the carbon dioxide and methane already documented deep in subduction zones, a rich variety of organic carbon species that could spark the formation of diamonds also exist.
"It is a very exciting possibility that these deep fluids might transport building blocks for life into the shallow Earth," said Sverjensky to Science Daily.
"This may be a key to the origin of life itself."
Sverjensky's theoretical model, called the Deep Earth Water model, allowed the team to determine the chemical makeup of fluids in Earth's mantle, expelled from descending tectonic plates. The research is part of a 10-year global project to further understanding of carbon on Earth called the Deep Carbon Observatory which is funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
SCIENCE DAILY | AMRI MAHBUB
