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Earth science

Hot metal

Nature volume 429, pages 33–34 (2004)Cite this article

The solubility of oxygen in molten iron increases at high temperature. Could this explain why Earth's mantle is poor in iron oxide, whereas the mantle of Mars, which formed under cooler conditions, is not?

The fate of light elements, such as oxygen, sulphur, carbon and hydrogen, during the formation of planetary cores has been hotly debated for decades. Forty years ago, Birch1 estimated that about 10% of Earth's core must be made of one or more of the light elements, to account for the density deficit seen in seismic observations when compared with a hypothetical core of pure iron metal. The advent of high-pressure, high-temperature technology in the 1980s has enabled the behaviour and distribution of elements between the mantle and core to be examined under conditions that simulate those in the deep planetary interior. Results from some of the first exploratory experiments2 suggested that sufficient oxygen would dissolve in iron metal under the extreme pressures at Earth's core–mantle boundary to account for the density deficit.

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Figure 1: Magma oceans on early Earth and Mars.

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  1. Institute of Meteoritics, and in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 87131-1126, New Mexico, USA

    Carl B. Agee

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  1. Carl B. Agee
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Agee, C. Hot metal. Nature 429, 33–34 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/429033a

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