RESEARCHERS DISCOVER WATER RESERVOIR BENEATH THE EARTH’SSURFACE

Researchers from WashingtonUniversity in the United States have discovered a mammoth water reservoirlocked in rocks 400 to 800 miles beneath eastern Asia. Stretching fromIndonesia to the northern tip of Russia, the water is estimated to be at leastequal in volume to the Arctic Ocean. The discovery marks the first time such alarge body of water has been found in the planet’s deep mantle.

Researchers MichaelWysession, a seismologist, and Jesse Lawrence, his former graduate student,found the water while scanning seismic waves?waves generated by earthquakestraveling through the earth. During analysis, the researchers noticedthat the strength of the waves appeared to dampen considerably in thearea, and that the waves appeared to slow down slightly.

Wysession believes that thereservoir was formed when a cold slab of the ocean floor sank thousands ofmiles into the Earth’s mantle. He said that the “water inside the rock goesdown with the sinking slab and it’s quite cold, but it heats up the deeper itgoes, and the rock eventually becomes unstable and loses its water.”