The Constitution of the Interior of Earth, as Revealed by Earthquakes

Posted on 1 December, 2014 by Metageologist

How to tell if the loaf of bread in your oven is cooked? You can see the outside is nicely browned, but you can’t see the middle – is it doughy still? Give it a tap and listen. If it sounds hollow then it’s ready. The sound of the tap passes through cooked bread differently than through dough.

As with loaves of bread, so with the earth beneath us. Earthquakes give the earth a tap and we listen to the earth with seismometers, but the principles are the same. The sound and shaking caused by the tap passes through places we can’t ourselves get to and the way they are changed tells us about the material they’ve passed through.

Simple seismology

Every time an earthquake ‘taps’ the earth, it sends seismic waves whizzing off in all directions. For those of us who live on the outside, the most dangerous types are those that travel along the surface, but we are interested here in body waves, the ones that travel through the earth’s interior. Imagine yourself watching a seismograph when an earthquake’s effects arrive1. The first set of twitches2 are caused by the arrival of the primary or P-waves. These travel fastest and work like sound waves – by compressing material in the direction of travel. Next arrive the secondary or S-waves which move forward while shearing material side to side (think of a slithering ssssnake).

What earthquakes can reveal

The first person to clearly identify P, S and surface waves on a seismogram3 was British scientist Richard Dixon Oldham. Born in 1858, he was child of the Empire. His father was Professor of Geology at Trinity College, Dublin. Following his father’s footsteps led him to the Geological Survey of India. Studying a 1897 magnitude 8.1 earthquake in Assam he spotted the distinct arrival of P, S and surface waves, due to their travelling at different speeds. What’s more, he linked these observations both to existing theory of how waves propagate in materials and to fault ruptures on the earth’s surface.

Ill-health took him back to Britain in 1903, where his research continued. In a lovely 1906 paper called “The Constitution of the Interior of Earth, as Revealed by Earthquakes” he showed what seismograms could tell you about the very centre of the earth.

In the introduction, he paints a picture of woe:

“Many theories of the earth have been propounded at different times: the central substance of the earth has been supposed to be fiery, fluid, solid, and gaseous in turn, till geologists have turned in despair from the subject, and become inclined to confine their attention to the outermost crust of the earth, leaving its centre as a playground for mathematicians.”

Taking data from a mere 14 earthquakes and similar number of stations, he plotted the interval between earthquake and wave arrival4 against distance in ‘degrees of arc’ (180 degrees of arc would be a wave that had passed directly through the earth to be measured at the point opposite the earthquake).

Figure 1 from Oldham (1906). The lower line is P-waves, the upper S-waves

Oldham’s insight, rescuing the centre of the earth from the mathematicians, was to use the obvious change in the pattern at about 150 degrees to infer a core of very different composition from the surrounding material. A seismometer at greater than 150 degrees from the earthquake must trace rays that have passed through the deep earth – so the times it records tell us about the very core of the earth.

Figure 2 from the same paper. Note how the paths taken by seismic waves are refracted by the changes in velocity at the core-mantle boundary

Oldham was confident that his data showed that “the central four-tenths of the [earth’s] radius are occupied by matter possessing radically different physical properties” and time has proved him right.

Seismology across the globe

Reading this paper is reminder that globalisation is not a modern phenomena. Oldham was drawing on recording stations from many place – not just from British Empire (New Zealand, Australia and South Africa) but also the Americas and the Russian Empire (Irkutsk, Tashkent and Tiflis). He refers to literature from Japan and papers written in both German and Dutch. The latter involved field work from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

While scientists across the world were communicating with each other, this was not necessarily done quickly. All the earthquakes he studied were between 12 and 4 years old.

A shadowy view of the inner core

As speculated upon by Oldham, but proved by others in the next few decades, S-waves don’t travel through the core, because it is liquid – seismometers on the opposite side of the earth don’t see an earthquakes S-waves as they are in the ‘shadow’ of the earth’s core. The patterns of refraction you see in Oldham’s diagram above mean that there is a shadow-zone for P-waves also.

In 1936, taking data from within the shadow zone of an earthquake in New Zealand, Inge Lehmann found waves that shouldn’t be there. Tracing their paths, she explained them by inferring a distinctive solid inner core that created more ways for rays to reflect and refract their way through (for more detail see this great write-up).

Seismic tomography

Seismic data can used for many things. Locating earthquake foci helps us trace patterns of faults across the globe and so better predict which areas of the surface are at risk. Making bangs at the surface and measuring the reflections from shallow sub-surface layers is a great way to find oil and gas. Using them to better understand the structure of the deep earth is known as global seismology, or seismic tomography.

The key principles of using seismology to study the earth’s interior were set in the early Twentieth Century. The time taken for waves to pass through the earth gives the speed they travelled, which tells you something about the properties of the material they passed through. Building up models of the interior of the earth allows you to trace the paths they took. Studying sets of paths that go through the same portion of the earth tells you something about the properties of that part of the earth.

Image of the deepest mantle from seismic tomography. Part of figure 7 from Steinberger et. al 2012

Armed with millions of data points and highly sophisticated mathematical models modern seismologists are able to image the earth’s depths in detail, down to scales of a hundred kilometres. As well as understanding how things change with depth, they are also able to spot differences between different places at the same depth. The very base of the mantle in particular contains a lot of distinct areas with unusually low velocity.

Variations in seismic velocity at the same depth can be explained by variations in temperature or in composition. Either way, to explain the features seismology shows us, we need to bring some other sciences to bear. Let’s move to chemistry next.

References

Oldham R.D. (1906). The Constitution of the Interior of the Earth, as Revealed by Earthquakes, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 62 (1-4) 456-475. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/gsl.jgs.1906.062.01-04.21

Steinberger B. & T. W. Becker (2012). Subduction to the lower mantle , Solid Earth, 3 (2) 415-432. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/se-3-415-2012

Subduction is not the end

Posted on 9 November, 2014 by Metageologist

Subduction is just the beginning. Stuck on the surface of the earth as we are, it’s easy to think that when oceanic lithosphere1 is destroyed when it vanishes into the mantle. But this is wrong. The more we manage to peer into the earth’s depths, the more clearly we see that subducted oceanic lithosphere is still down there. It’s arrival into the deep earth influences many things and sets of changes that in turn affect the surface.

Our growing understanding of what happens to oceanic lithosphere when it reaches the deep earth comes from the integration of a vast repertoire of scientific approaches. Physics, chemistry, mathematical modelling, high-pressure laboratory experiments, tiny grains in diamonds – all these things have something to tell us about the deep earth.

As in the deep oceans, so in the deep earth. We now know that both places are extremely varied environments, warped by extreme pressures, full of the weird and the exotic and some surprising relics from the past. Both are hard (or impossible) to visit, yet they still have influence over surface conditions.

A journey into the deep

This is the first of a series of posts on the deep earth. There’s a great mass of fascinating recent science out there that deserves to be better know. As a taster, let me tell you about lovely little Nature paper from 2005 that picks out the themes I hope to trace through future posts: how much of the deep earth is still mysterious, how we know what we know, the billion-year timescales and how the surface and depths are intimately linked.

In the paper David Dobson and John Brodholt (both, then as now, at University College, London) speculate that some distinctive parts of the deepest mantle are formed from subducted banded-iron formation.

Folded banded iron formation. Photo was not taken at the core-mantle boundary. Image from Wikipedia.

Seismic studies (tracing the shakings caused by earthquakes) have identified parts of the lowest mantle where earthquake waves pass through over 10% slower than expected. This means that these areas, known here as ultralow-velocity zones (ULVZs), must be in some way different – either they are made of different material or they are are at a different temperature to their surroundings.

Nobody knows what the ULVZs are made of, but our authors put the case that they contain large volumes of banded-iron-formation (BIF). Between 2.8 and 1.8 billion years ago photosynthetic organisms (probably bacteria) profoundly changed our planet’s atmosphere by producing vast quantities of Oxygen. One consequence was that ferric iron, dissolved in the ocean, bound with the Oxygen ‘waste’ and was precipitated out as solid minerals of magnetite and haematite. This process created vast volumes of marine sediments rich in iron. These banded iron formation deposits are found in rocks of this age from around the world.

Assuming this material was subducted what would happen and could it account for the properties of the ULVZs at the bottom of the mantle? Tracing through the required steps, our authors show that BIF material would be dense enough to sink to the base of the mantle, able to separate out from the more normal material in the subducted plate and would not dissolve into the underlying iron-rich core. If these steps had occurred, then the material would match the measurable properties of the ULVZs.

Just because something is plausible, doesn’t make it true of course. Proving this link between ULVZs and BIFs definitively may never be possible. But one further clue exists: having an iron rich layer close to the edge of the core might help explain patterns of change in the length of the day we surface-dweller can observe.

The earth’s nutations are daily variations in its rotation. They are caused by the pull of the earth, sun and other bodies, but are also influenced by the degree to which the core and mantle spin independently or are coupled together. The outer core is liquid and the mantle solid, so they would be able to spin independently, but studies of nutations suggest there is some coupling – transfer of momentum – between them. If ULVZs are formed of BIFs and so very rich in iron, they would interact with the earth’s magnetic field causing electromagnetic coupling in a way that matches the observations.

It’s a mind-expanding idea. Sediments formed billions of years ago in a now alien atmosphere sit thousands of kilometres under our feet, subtly modulating the length of the day.

Deep cycles

When listening to a classical orchestra, most often we are paying attention to the high to middling frequency sounds – the violins, flutes and so on. The full experience – a live performance – is vastly enriched by the deepest, lowest frequency instruments. A full desk of double basses, or some bass clarinets make the air itself throb, producing a more physical, visceral and emotional experience2.

Our experience of living on this planet is enriched by our understanding of its cycles of change. The most frequent are most apparent: the year’s seasons; the carbon cycle; Milankovitch cycles that bring ice to sculpt the landscape. Subduction is one of the deepest, the slowest of them all – linking the familiar surface with the mysterious depths, it is the fundamental frequency in the orchestra of the earth.

References

The Nature paper is available here.

Dobson D.P. (2005). Subducted banded iron formations as a source of ultralow-velocity zones at the core–mantle boundary, Nature, 434 (7031) 371-374. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature03430

Six amazing facts about what’s under your feet

Posted on 11 June, 2014 by Metageologist

Just 100s km away from you are right now there is a place where rocks can flow, where once-living matter is turned in jewels, from where deadly plumes once killed nearly all life on earth. We can never visit this place – even though it’s right under you.

1. Human beings will never reach the deep earth

We’ve been to the moon and Mars is almost in our reach but we are never going to the deep earth. The deepest hole ever drilled got just over 12km below the surface – that’s a paltry 0.2% of the 6380km to the earth’s centre. It gets harder to drill the further you go. The rock was already 180°C when they stopped drilling and it gets hotter as you go down, getting as high as maybe 6000°C (as hot as the surface of the sun).

We could *maybe* send a probe down there. In a paper in Nature, David Stevenson came up with the most plausible plan to date. It involves making a crack in the earth (with a nuclear explosion) and filling it with 100,000 tonnes of liquid iron and a small probe. The probe (might) then sink down to the edge of the earth’s core. No-one is planning to try this out at the moment, but it would make for an interesting Kickstarter project.

There is a lot of heat in the earth. Consider that scene in Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon comes out of hyperspace and finds just spinning rocks where Alderaan used to be. If a Death Star destroyed earth you wouldn’t get an asteroid belt immediately afterwards, instead you’d get a extremely hot cloud of liquid, or even vaporised rock. Even Han Solo would have trouble dodging that.

2. A spinning ball of molten metal

The earth’s structure is a bit like that of a peach. There’s a thin skin, a thick juicy layer and a core that’s surprisingly large and totally different from the stuff above it.

We are the thin layer of mould on the surface of our giant peach. The skin is the earth’s crust (that we can’t even drill through). The bulk of the earth is called the mantle and its made up of a dark heavy rock called peridotite. We can never get to the earth’s core, but we know (from indirect observations and by analogy with meteorites) that it’s made of iron and nickel – totally different from the silica-rich rock above. The outer layer of the core is molten, but at the very centre of the earth its solid, made out of giant crystals of iron and nickel.

A giant sphere full of 15 tons of liquid sodium, used to simulate the earth’s core. Source.

The spinning liquid outer core produces the magnetic field that twists your compass and tells dogs which direction to pee in. One way to understand the core better is to simulate it in the lab, by creating a giant sphere containing spinning liquid sodium. It’s also a good way for scientists to look a bit more like Bond villains standing next to their super-weapon.

3. You can’t handle the pressure!

It seems counter-intuitive. The earth gets hotter the deeper you go, yet the outer core is molten and the inner solid. Normally things melt when they get hotter, so why is that?

Pressure.

We’re familiar with the fact that pressure increases in the deep sea, as there is a lot of water above, pushing down. It’s the same in the earth, only rock is heavier and there are thousands of kilometres above, pushing down.

The pressures get so intense that the only way to reproduce them in the lab is to take an tiny unfortunate sample of rock, put it between two diamonds and squeeeeze. To reach the required temperatures, you also fire lasers at it, through the diamonds. Occasionally the diamonds can’t handle the pressure and they explode, sometimes popping loudly or emitting a flash of light.

Diamond damaged by laser fire. Image from Wendy Panero.

Diamond damaged by laser fire in a diamond anvil. Image from Wendy Panero.

Pile of diamond dust after ‘blowout’ of the anvil. Source.

Under high pressure, it’s easier for materials to be solid rather than liquid, as the atoms prefer to be tightly packed together. The metal in the earth’s core is solid at the centre because the pressure is higher there.

4. Solid rock that flows

We know from listening to earthquake waves that pass through it that the earth’s mantle is solid. It’s incredibly hot, but the pressure means that – give or take a few percent in places – there is no liquid rock down there.

Knowing this held back acceptance of the idea that continents move. The geological evidence was known, but it was thought that continents couldn’t move because they were attached to the mantle and ‘solid rock can’t flow’. Only it can.

Hit a piece of the mantle with a hammer and it will break (or break your hammer – it’s tough stuff). But heat it up and push it the same way for millions of years and it will flow. It’s made of crystals, endless ranks of atoms lined up in rigid patterns. Tiny gaps in these patterns allow atoms to slip past each other and slightly change the shape of the crystal. Countless of these tiny steps, in myriad of crystals over millions of years allows the earth’s mantle to flow, convecting in majestic patterns driven by heat leaving the earth.

Patterns of plate tectonics on the surface are driven by this flow. The most dramatic example being subduction, where crust sinks down into the mantle, sometimes sinking deep down to the edge of the core.

Cut-away diagram showing modern convection from computer modelling by Fabio Crameri. Red is rising plumes, blue sinking plates.

Cut-away diagram showing convection in the earth. Red is rising plumes, blue and yellow sinking plates. Image generated from computer modelling by Mario Crameri.

5. Death from below

The link between meteorite impacts and mass extinctions is well known – the image of a dinosaur looking up at an incoming fireball is almost a cliche. However some scientists think they should be looking down, and that the deep earth has caused more extinctions than impacts have.

The event that did for the dinosaurs, at the end of the Cretaceous (66 million years ago) is just the most glamorous of many mass extinction events. The biggest was at the end of the Permian (252 million years) – up to 96% of marine species became extinct. There is no good evidence for a meteorite impact at the end of the Permian, but there is a huge pile of lava, covering much of Siberia. This was caused by a massive mantle plume, a column of hot rock that started at the base of mantle.

To kill nearly anything you need to foul the sky and poison the seas. Volcanoes give off noxious gases which in normal amounts don’t cause problems. But covering 2 million square kilometres of land in lava is not normal. However it was done – by pumping out massive quantities of ash or by producing carbon dioxide by burning nearby coal deposits (or some other way) – the link between mantle plumes, lava and death seems pretty certain.

The end-Cretaceous extinction saw a meteorite impact, but it also saw a massive outpouring of lava from the mantle, this time in India, at exactly the same time. There are those who argue that the death of the dinosaurs is as much due to the deep earth as it is a rock from space.

A huge outpouring of lava. From Wikipedia

A huge outpouring of lava. Image from Wikipedia

6. Visitors from the deep

A lot of what we know about the deep earth comes from indirect measurements, like when a doctor uses a stethoscope or MRI scanner to ‘look’ inside your body. But sometimes to know what’s really going on you need a direct sample from deep inside – a biopsy. To do this for the heavenly body we sit on – in other words to perform a geopsy1 – you need a special kind of volcanic rock. When some molten rock rises from the mantle, it contains crystals that were formed at depth, but carried up in it. The most interesting, most glamorous, most beautiful, and most valuable of these exotic visitors are diamonds.

I could go on about diamonds for a long time (in fact, I already have) but forget that they can be made billions of years old, and may contain traces of an ancient oxygen-free atmosphere, instead let’s focus on the fact that some diamonds contain carbon that was once part of a living thing.

When carbon has passed through a process of photosynthesis, its isotopes have a distinctive pattern . Finding this ‘light carbon’ in diamonds allows us to tell an amazing story. Something was once alive2, died and formed black mud on the ocean floor. This was then forced into the mantle where it sank deeper and deeper. At some point the carbon started flowing up (as part of some sort of fluid) and got pulled into a growing diamond which then got caught up in some fizzy magma that, within hours or days, pushed up to near the earth’s surface, where humans could find it and marvel.

Human beings can never reach the deep earth. Alive. The carbon in our bodies might though. Just arrange to die and get buried in the right bit of the sea bed and part of you might one day end up in the deep earth.

References

What to know more? Don’t believe these amazing facts are true? Either way, read these links for more details.

The idea of how to get a probe into the deep Earth come from a pukka scientific paper.

The Death Star isn’t really real (honest), but scientists model the liquid/gas rock that would happen if the earth was destroyed when they model a collision with another planet. Something that may have happened long ago to create the moon.

If you want to see that huge sphere containing liquid sodium in action, see it here.

My information about exploding diamonds came from Mary Panero, who is on Twitter @mineraltoPlanet

All you ever wanted to know about the Siberian Traps and the end-Permian event can be found on a great Leicester University site.

Scientists who believe mantle plumes rather than the meteorite killed the dinosaurs point to evidence from India. The lava (known as the Deccan Traps) is seen to happen at the same time as the extinctions, but the layer of Iridium enrichment comes after the extinction. More details here.

More more information about diamonds, there’s a useful recent review of the science.