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Nature Geoscience 1, 648–650 (1 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/ngeo327

Mineral physics: The spin deep within

Stephen Stackhouse

The Earth's lower mantle, located between the depths of about 660 km to 2,890 km, is a region with a distinct mineralogical composition. The bulk of this region is made up of two mineral phases — silicate perovskite (|[sim]|75%) and magnesiow|[uuml]|stite (|[sim]|20%) — although in the lowermost few hundred kilometres, perovskite transforms into a denser phase termed post-perovskite.