A gold reservoir is hidden in Earth's core and it's leaking into the mantle, says new study

A new study claims that Earth is receiving some very valuable gifts from deep under the surface. Analysis of certain lava from Hawaii has shown experts that the stash of precious metals embedded near the core-mantle boundary is making its way out. Findings regarding this eruption have been published in the journal Nature. Past observations have implied that this collection of metals is caught in a zone that is around 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) underground. The collection includes valuable metals, such as gold and ruthenium. The detection of ruthenium in lava ejecting from Hawaii made experts speculate that this band is possibly leaking and coming to the surface. 

New Revelations from Basaltic Rocks

The results were produced from a three-year analysis of basaltic rocks, according to CNN. These rocks are formed when molten rocks rise from the ocean floor. The molten rocks in this situation are called lava. Several heavy metals were found in these rocks. These metals are from the band of metals near the core-mantle boundary. This detection implied that Earth's molten core interacts with the rocky mantle, the layer that exists between the thin crust and the core. This interaction is supposedly happening in the form of some metal content from the core leaking into the mantle. If this assertion is true, then it challenges the past claim that suggested the core to be an isolated entity.

"Their density is too different, like oil and water, so technically they shouldn't mix. And we still don't have a good mechanism to explain why they do. We don't really know much about the core at all," Nils Messling, study author and a researcher in the geochemistry department at Göttingen University in Germany, added. Prior examinations have revealed that the band of metals was formed due to several meteorite bombardments that happened on Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. This band supposedly has 99.95% of the planet's gold. A tiny amount of this gold has come to the surface, though researchers have yet to confirm if a huge quantity will follow. It would be massive if experts could access the gold and other metals in the band, as it is around 236 times deeper than what the present digging technologies could reach. 

Detection of Ruthenium

Experts spotted several metals in the Basaltic rocks, but it was the detection of a certain kind of ruthenium that confirmed that metals had indeed leaked from the core, per Live Science. Past studies have determined that the composition of the Earth's ruthenium altered in the last stages of the planet's development due to the arrival of more materials. Since the core was formed before the other layers, the ruthenium detected in this layer is possibly different than the others. Researchers collected basaltic rocks from various sites in Hawaii, including the lava lake in the Kilauea volcano. They compared ruthenium found in these rocks to that detected in Earth's mantle and noted significant differences.

Moreover, experts found a particular isotope, which made them conclude that the volcanic rocks exhibited a high concentration of ruthenium, possibly embedded in the core. It suggests that precious metals, like ruthenium and gold, from that specific band near the boundary, as well as the core, can move out and eventually reach the surface. Experts have put forward another speculation regarding this finding that the leaking may not be recent, and many of the metals that have been mined or are in the process of extraction are from the core itself, as reported by Earth. "Whether these processes that we observe today have also been operating in the past remains to be proven. Our findings open up an entirely new perspective on the evolution of the inner dynamics of our home planet," shared Messling.

New Insights on 'How Hawaii was formed?'

The finding also sheds light on some new facts about the formation of Hawaii Island and other regions, possibly linked to the core-mantle boundary. Matthias Willbold, a geochemistry professor at Göttingen University, believes that the findings indicate that huge volumes of superheated mantle material came out of the core-mantle boundary and were raised to the surface to build ocean islands like Hawaii. A lot of the metals detected in the molten rock possibly feed Hawaii's volcanoes. This finding is poised to change everything conceptualized before about processes like heat flow and magnetic field generation by experts. It could also transform the way people access metal resources, especially in volcanic regions. The next step for researchers is to determine the pace at which metals flow from the core and how they erupt through the mantle.