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A first-of-its-kind analysis of Hawaiian volcanic rocks has revealed that the Earth’s core is leaking gold and other precious metals into the surface above.
Over 99.99 per cent of the Earth’s deposits of gold and precious metals like Ruthenium lie locked away in its metallic core beneath 3,000km of solid rock and far beyond the reach of humankind.
The precious metals were locked in the core when the planet formed 4.5bn years ago. “Precious metals such as ruthenium are highly concentrated in the metallic core but extremely depleted in the silicate mantle,” researchers said in the analysis published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The researchers, using new techniques, detected Ruthenium in volcanic rocks on the Earth’s surface in levels that indicated their origin lay in the core-mantle boundary.
The study found that volcanic basalt rocks from Hawaii had a much higher concentration of precious metals than the mantle did.
“Our data confirms that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the mantle above,” study co-author Nils Messling from the University of Göttingen said.
“When the first results came in, we realised that we had literally struck gold!”
Hawaiian volcanic rocks found to contain traces of precious metals (United States Geological Survey)
The findings reveal that the Earth’s core is not as isolated as previously believed. Once thought inaccessible, material from the core is ejected towards the surface during volcanic eruptions and could be studied in the future through such leaks.
Forms of Ruthenium could act as a new tracer to further study core-mantle interaction, the researchers said.
The new analysis shows that several hundred quadrillion metric tonnes of superheated material from near the core-mantle boundary rise to the Earth’s surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii.
This also means that at least some of the world’s supplies of gold and other precious metals that we rely on now come from the core.
However, researchers said, it remained to be seen whether the core-leaking process observed in the study existed in the past as well.
“Our findings open up an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the inner dynamics of our home planet,” the study noted.
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