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Noble gases under pressure in the mantle

Nature volume 393, pages 303–304 (1998)Cite this article

New results imply that we may be in for a surprise about how argon, krypton and xenon behave in the Earth's mantle. Laboratory experiments show that these noble gases, which are used as geochemical tracers, do not act as expected under high pressure.

In partial melting, noble gases are expelled from the solid material and dissolved into the resulting melt because of their large atomic size and chemical inertness. This characteristic behaviour is well established experimentally at ordinary to moderate pressures. Taking for granted that the result also applies at the higher pressures prevailing in the Earth's interior, mantle degassing has been assumed to be invariably accompanied by degassing of noble gases, making them excellent tracers for study of mantle degassing and the evolution of the atmosphere.

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Figure 1: Scheme for how the results of Chamorro-Pérez et al.1 and Jephcoat2 might affect our understanding of the behaviour of noble gases in the Earth's mantle.

References

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  1. the Department of Earth and Planetary Physics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Tokyo, 113-8653, Tokyo, Japan

    Minoru Ozima

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  1. Minoru Ozima
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Ozima, M. Noble gases under pressure in the mantle. Nature 393, 303–304 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/30594

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