{"id":297706,"date":"2026-02-18T17:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T17:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/297706\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T17:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T17:26:08","slug":"scientists-say-earths-core-could-be-hiding-the-equivalent-of-up-to-45-oceans-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/297706\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Say Earth\u2019s Core Could Be Hiding the Equivalent of up to 45 Oceans of Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Earth's <\/a>The Earth\u2019s core might not be what we once thought. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory.<\/p>\n

Earth\u2019s core has often been described as just a giant ball of iron and nickel. Now, a new study argues that it is also a major storage place for hydrogen<\/a>, possibly equivalent to dozens of oceans\u2019 worth of water, locked away in metal deep below our feet.<\/p>\n

In the paper, researchers led by Motohiko Murakami at ETH Zurich conducted laboratory experiments designed to simulate the intense pressure and heat present during Earth\u2019s formation. They concluded that hydrogen likely entered the core early, traveling with silicon and oxygen as the planet\u2019s interior separated into layers.<\/p>\n

How do you find hydrogen in a place we cannot sample?<\/p>\n

No drill can reach the core. Seismic waves<\/a> help, but the core\u2019s conditions are so extreme that matching lab data to the real Earth is tricky. So the team recreated core-forming conditions using a laser-heated diamond anvil cell \u2014 two tiny diamonds squeezing a sample at pressures far beyond anything on the surface, while a laser drives temperatures into the thousands of degrees.<\/p>\n

In their setup, a water-bearing crystal capsule held a small piece of metallic iron. When the iron melted, hydrogen, oxygen, and silicon moved into the liquid metal. Then the researchers \u201cfroze\u201d the sample quickly so they could examine where the atoms ended up. The challenging part was spotting hydrogen, the lightest element, inside a dense metal under these conditions. <\/p>\n

\u201cUsing state-of-the-art tomography, we were finally able to visualise how these atoms behave within metallic iron,\u201d said Dongyang Huang, a former postdoctoral researcher and first author of the study.<\/p>\n

The key result is that the hydrogen is chemically \u201cpacked\u201d into the core\u2019s material. Hydrogen does not sit in the core as a free gas or as water molecules. Instead, it becomes part of the metal itself, forming iron hydrides tied to silicon- and oxygen-rich nanostructures within an iron alloy. <\/p>\n

That part matters because it offers a mechanism for how hydrogen could be carried downward during core formation rather than staying near the surface.<\/p>\n

Using the hydrogen-to-silicon ratio measured in the lab and combining it with earlier estimates of how much silicon is in Earth\u2019s core, the team estimated that hydrogen makes up about 0.07% to 0.36% of the core\u2019s mass. That percentage sounds small, but the core is enormous. Converted into \u201cif it became water\u201d terms, the estimate equals roughly 9 to 45 oceans of water (some summaries describe it as up to about 45 oceans).<\/p>\n

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A new angle on where Earth\u2019s water came from<\/p>\n

Scientists have long debated whether Earth\u2019s water mostly arrived late, delivered by comets and asteroids after the core formed, or whether much of it was present during the main building phase of the planet. This study supports the second theory: if that much hydrogen ended up in the core, a large supply likely existed early, while the core was forming, not only after the fact.<\/p>\n

That does not mean comets delivered nothing. It suggests late delivery may not be the main source, at least if the new core numbers hold up.<\/p>\n

Hydrogen stored at depth could influence several big Earth systems over long timescales. The ETH team points to possible links with how the core generates Earth\u2019s magnetic field, how the mantle moves, and how hydrogen might slowly cycle between deep Earth and the surface over billions of years.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a wider payoff: learning how hydrogen behaves in metal at high pressure helps researchers model rocky exoplanets. The mix of light elements in a planet\u2019s interior can affect whether it forms a metallic core and how it evolves.<\/p>\n

Even with flashy \u201cdozens of oceans\u201d headlines, the estimate rests on a chain of evidence: laboratory measurements, imaging of tiny structures, and assumptions about core composition from past work. The next step is to test how robust those links are\u2014especially how well lab results scale to a messy, planet-sized system.<\/p>\n

Still, the message is hard to ignore: the water we see at Earth\u2019s surface may be only a small fraction of Earth\u2019s total hydrogen story, with a large share hidden where we cannot reach inside the core itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe findings enhance our understanding of the deep Earth,\u201d Murikami said. \u201cThey provide clues as to how water and other volatile substances were distributed in the early solar system and how the Earth acquired its hydrogen\u2026The water we see on the Earth\u2019s surface today may be just the visible tip of a gigantic iceberg deep inside the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Earth\u2019s core might not be what we once thought. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory. Earth\u2019s core has often…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25102,26209,33461,150675,85,46,141],"class_list":{"0":"post-297706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-earths-core","9":"tag-eth-zurich","10":"tag-hydrogen","11":"tag-hydrogen-ocean","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}