Depletion of davemaoite in Earth’s ambient lower mantle
Ming Hao, Motohiko Murakami, Pinku Saha, Nicolas Guignot · 2026
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Description
Ming Hao and co-authors report a 2026 study on a scarce mineral deep in Earth and what its sound speeds say about the lower mantle. The mineral, davemaoite, should be the third most common phase down there. Doubts about its traits have blurred the link between quake reads and mantle makeup.
The team squeezed and heated samples in a diamond press while reading sound speeds with light scatter. A shape shift in the mineral held below a set heat line across the whole depth range. Its sideways wave speeds proved slow at deep states. With speeds that slow, no normal mix with even a bit of the mineral fits quake data. The authors say it must pool instead in two giant deep zones.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ming Hao, Motohiko Murakami, Pinku Saha, Nicolas Guignot |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 37 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |