Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.
What's in the Earth
Kei Hirose (Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Science)
| by Kei Hirose |
| What's Inside the Earth? What's Inside, What's Happening? |
|
Kodansha (2022) |
| isbn 978-4065266601 |
There is a saying that "the center of the earth is farther than the edge of the solar system. The distance from the earth's surface to the center of the earth is 6400 km, much shorter than that of Pluto, long considered the outermost planet of the solar system. However, the discovery of the inner core (solid core) at the Earth's center was made in 1936, while Pluto was discovered six years earlier. Even in the age of spacecraft sending clear images from Pluto, it is still impossible to send a probe to the Earth's interior. The deep interior of the earth is still an unknown area.
The Earth's interior is a world of high pressure and temperature. In our laboratory, we use diamond, the hardest material, and lasers to create the environment of the Earth's deep interior in the laboratory. We have shown that the lowest part of the Earth's mantle is composed of minerals never before imagined, and that the inner core is a relatively recent formation.
In this book, we introduce what we have discovered through such high-pressure experiments, that is, what kind of materials exist in the Earth's interior and what is happening inside. Furthermore, how the Earth was born and how it has evolved so far is discussed. Recently, Mars exploration has progressed, and it is now known that the Martian core is quite large. In this book, the authors present new theories, such as that the Martian core caused the loss of the oceans. I hope you will read this book and learn that what happens under our feet has a great impact on the Earth's environment.
(Related Lectures: Earth System Evolution (College of Arts and Sciences), Solid Earth Science and Materials Science of the Earth and Planetary Interior (Faculty of Science))
Published in Faculty of Science News, March 2023