New insight into the temperature of deep Earth

Clouds over Australia are shown. Credit: NASA

Scientists from the Magma and Volcanoes Laboratory (CNRS) and the European Synchrotron, the ESRF, have recreated the extreme conditions 600 to 2900 km below the Earth’s surface to investigate the melting of basalt in the oceanic tectonic plates. They exposed microscopic pieces of rock to these extreme pressures and temperatures while simultaneously studying their structure with the ESRF’s extremely powerful X-ray beam.

The results are published in Science on the 23 May 2014.


Convection causes hot material to rise to the surface of the Earth and cold material to sink towards the core. Thus, when the ascending mantle begins to melt at the base of the oceanic ridges, the basalt flows along the surface to form what we call the oceanic crust. “Over the course of millennia the crust will then undergo subduction, its greater density causing it to sink into the mantle. This is why the Earth’s continents are known to be several billion years old, while the oldest oceanic crust only dates back 165 million years” said Mohamed Mezouar, scientist at the ESRF.



If it is indeed the basalt and not the mantle whose melting in the D”-region is responsible for the observed seismic anomalies, then the temperature at the core-mantle boundary must be between 3800 and 4150 Kelvin, between the melting points of basalt and the Earth’s mantle. If this hypothesis is correct, this would be the most accurate determination of the temperature at the core-mantle boundary available today.

“It could solve a long time controversy about the peculiar role of the core-mantle boundary in the dynamical properties of the Earth mantle, said Professor Denis Andrault. ”We know now that the cycle of crust formation at the mid-ocean ridges and crust dissolution in the lowermost mantle may have occured since plate tectonics were active on our planet”, he added.

More information: “Melting of subducted basalt at the core-mantle boundary,” by D. Andrault et al. Science:

Note : The above story is based on materials provided byEuropean Synchrotron Radiation Facility