Links between the Archean hydrosphere and Earth’s interior
Zheng-Yu Long, Frédéric Moynier, Igor S. Puchtel, Yiheng Li, Tu-Han Luu, Jun Deng, Kun-Feng Qiu · 2026
Read Links between the Archean hydrosphere and Earth’s interior by Zheng-Yu Long, Frédéric Moynier, Igor S. Puchtel, Yiheng Li, Tu-Han Luu, Jun Deng, Kun-Feng Qiu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13439540.txt.
Description
Zheng-Yu Long and colleagues read ancient lava rocks for signs that surface water reached Earth's deep interior early in its history, reporting in 2026. Long-term habitability hinges on water cycling between surface and mantle, yet when that loop began is contested. Komatiites, ultra-hot magmas from the Archean era, sample deep mantle chemistry with unusual sensitivity. The team measured potassium isotopes, atomic variants that fingerprint water-altered rock, in komatiites from ten sites worldwide.
Rocks from three sites carried heavy potassium signatures well above normal mantle values. The best match is mantle soaked by fluids from sunken, water-changed ocean crust. That places surface water transfer into deep reservoirs at or before 3.6 billion years ago. The authors argue that subduction-style recycling, the engine of plate tectonics, was already running in Earth's youth.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Zheng-Yu Long, Frédéric Moynier, Igor S. Puchtel, Yiheng Li, Tu-Han Luu, Jun Deng, Kun-Feng Qiu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 32869 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |