World's largest water reservoir found deep in earth

Indo Asian News Service ^ | 13 June 2014 | Anon

[rjbemsha]

In what could quench the thirst of billions of people in the future, researchers have discovered our planet's largest water reservoir 640 km beneath our feet - bound up in rock deep in the earth's mantle.

This water is not in a form familiar to us - it is not liquid, ice or vapour.

This fourth form is water trapped inside the molecular structure of the minerals in the mantle rock.

Scientists have been looking for this missing deep water for decades," explained geophysicist Steve Jacobsen from Northwestern University.

[rjbemsha]

If just one percent of the weight of mantle rock located in the transition zone is H2O, that would be equivalent to nearly three times the amount of water in our oceans.

[Erik Latranyi]

But isn’t Peak Water a real problem? Isn’t the planet running out of water?

It’s a manmade problem!
It’s Bush’s fault!

[taildragger]

I am waiting for the Sierra Club to chime in that we can’t go after it, after all the technology to get it is right at our fingertips. Fracking Equipment. Oh the Horror :-)...

[knarf]

Yeah .. right ... frack it ... I’m sure that’s the next argument

[muir_redwoods]

Sorry, it’s heritage water and belongs to Gaia. Using it would be an insult to the planet.

[cripplecreek]

I’ve read that there may be as much as 10 times more water in the earth than on it. In fact the story I read seemed to suggest that our sea levels are as high as they can be because more water in the oceans would mean more water forced into the earth.

[Sawdring]

Do you think your going to frack 640 kilometers below the surface worth today’s technology?

[Fester Chugabrew]

“. . . the fountains of the great deep burst open . . . “

[tumblindice]

Besides, it can’t be easy tossing back a glass of rocks.

[AlexW]

“But isn’t Peak Water a real problem? Isn’t the planet running out of water?”
___________________________________________________________
What, me worry?...I have 187 quintillion gallons of water just a hundred feet from my door. Of course, I have to remove the salt before drinking it, but I know that can be done.
When I run out of that, I will just move on over to the Atlantic. :))

[muir_redwoods]

Certainly not to a group more used to smoking rocks

[Blueflag]

First thing I thought of as well.

[Dixie Yooper]

There must be a way to tie this to Climate Disruption!

[Iron Munro]

Bad to pump oil reservoirs because then it will all be used up.

But okay to pump fresh water reservoirs.

[ealgeone]

“. . . the fountains of the great deep burst open . . . “

thinking the same thing!

[SC_Pete]

But if we have global warming and Miami is going to be underwater, why would we want more water? Why not pump it down to the mantle? Then we wouldn’t have to build those sea walls around Manhattan. Or something or other. Oh, and don’t forget Al Gore’s mansion in Pacific Palisades. Or something or other.

It’s difficult to keep up with all the Friedman think in his “Flat Earth”.

[Little Pig]

A nice scientific discovery, but utterly inapplicable to today’s water issues. Anything 640km down is far into the mantle i.e. well into the zone of molten or near-molten rock. That depth is actually the approximate boundary of the lower mantle.

[cicero2k]

And there is a battery that will propel a car 800 miles.

Except it can’t be recharged.

[docbnj]

The article is totally misleading. There is no way to get at this water, and it has never been directly sampled.
In fact, it is not even water, but just OH, which is part of water and could be made to recombine to produce hydrogen and water — however, all this is far beneath the surface of the Earth, in the middle part
of the mantle, hundreds of km down. By comparison, humans have never even drilled through the mantle of the earth, which is as thin as 5 km in ocean basins.
It is as even more impossible and impractical to get at this water directly as it would be to ship minerals here from the moon, which is another nutty idea one occasional sees featured in journalism of the grocery-store check-out-line level.
The mineral ringwoodite (mentioned in the article) is stable at pressures around 20 GPa. By comparison, the atmospheric pressure at the Earth’s surface is 100 kPa. So ringhwoodite exists at pressures about 20 million times that of the surface (if I have my zeros right).

But perhaps it would be fun to start a movement against fracking for ringwoodite-water, just to divert those who fear fracking in the crust of the Earth, or those afraid of genetically modified organisms.

[onedoug]

My Geology I teacher mentioned this back in 1975.