Discovered huge amounts of water, 1000 km below the Earth's surface

The presence of a huge ocean under the Earth's surface, such as that proposed by Jules Verne in "Journey to the Center of the Earth", might not be such a distant theory of reality.

"If this water was not below the Earth's surface, it would suffocate us all. They could be as many as those in many oceans, "said Steve Jacobsen of Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), whose team is responsible for the discovery and publication of the article . "This implies that the planet may have much higher water reserves than we thought."

Before thinking of fantastic scenery with underwater oceans and sea monsters, however, one needs to specify one thing: it is not clear at this time how much of this water is in the liquid state. As Jacobsen said, most plausible hypotheses claim to be trapped within minerals , more or less like "milk in a cake".

The discovery of water has been suggested by the discovery of a diamond, erupted by a volcano near the Sao Luiz River in Juina (Brazil).

The diamond has imperfections, that is, the inclusions of minerals that have been trapped during its formation. When researchers observed it with an infrared microscope, they found unequivocal evidence of the presence of hydroxyl ions, which usually come from the water.

To understand how deep the diamond had formed - and hence the source of water - the team considered the type of minerals in the inclusions; contain traces of metals that are usually formed in the earth's mantle, at a great depth.

In particular, ferric iron, a mixture of iron and magnesium oxide has been found, which can absorb other metals such as aluminum and titanium under strong temperature and pressure - just like the earth's cloak.

This allowed the researchers to estimate the depth at which the diamond was formed, at values ​​around 1000 km below the Earth's surface.

"It's the deepest water found in the planet's water cycle," Jacobsen said. "This allows us to understand that the water cycle on Earth is much wider than we thought, and extends to the deep earth cloak."

Where this water comes from, it's a whole discourse apart; At present, geologists are unsure whether our planet has ever possessed water, or whether it has been transported by celestial bodies such as asteroids and comets. Determining the age of water by analysis could suggest a response.