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Earth Science

The mantle deformed

Nature volume 428, pages 812–813 (2004)Cite this article

What happens to minerals under the conditions characteristic of the Earth at great depths? Experiments performed under such conditions illustrate how the main constituent of the lower mantle may behave.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, it was thought that the Earth is a solid body and that no internal movement of matter could occur. Then, with the discovery of plate tectonics and mantle convection, a whole new understanding of the planet's dynamics emerged. Matter can indeed flow within the seemingly solid regions of the deep Earth, and these processes often control the surface dynamics. Yet the microsopic mechanisms controlling flow remain poorly understood. That is scarcely surprising: it is no easy matter to simulate the conditions to which materials in, for example, the lower mantle or the inner core are subject. So the plastic properties of those materials have remained largely unknown.

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Figure 1: The structure of silicate perovskite (Mg,Fe)SiO3.

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  1. the Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Kashiwanoha 5-1-5, Kashiwa, 277-8581, Chiba, Japan

    Sébastien Merkel

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  1. Sébastien Merkel
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Merkel, S. The mantle deformed. Nature 428, 812–813 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/428812a

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/428812a

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