Mineralogy articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ages and geochemical compositions of inclusions of sublithospheric diamonds indicate additions to the mantle keel of Gondwana by the underplating of buoyant subducted material, originating from 300–700-km depth, which may have contributed to supercontinent stability during long-distance migration.

    • Suzette Timmerman
    • , Thomas Stachel
    •  & D. Graham Pearson

  • Article |

    Experiments show that calcium solubility in bridgmanite increases with depth in Earth’s lower mantle, resulting in the disappearance of CaSiO3 perovskite and indicating a transition from a two-perovskite to a single-perovskite domain.

    • Byeongkwan Ko
    • , Eran Greenberg
    •  & Sang-Heon Shim

  • Article |

    At temperatures and pressures typical of the Earth’s lower mantle, cubic CaSiO3 perovskite is found to have lower strength and viscosity compared to bridgmanite and ferropericlase, providing clues to its role in subduction regions.

    • J. Immoor
    • , L. Miyagi
    •  & H. Marquardt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    X-ray diffraction experiments indicate that the depression of the Earth’s 660-kilometre seismic discontinuity beneath cold subduction zones is caused by a phase transition from akimotoite to bridgmanite, leading to slab stagnation.

    • Artem Chanyshev
    • , Takayuki Ishii
    •  & Tomoo Katsura

  • Article |

    Analysis of global three-dimensional shear attenuation and velocity models implies that partial melting in the seismic low-velocity zone enables motion of oceanic plates by reducing the viscosity of the asthenosphere.

    • Eric Debayle
    • , Thomas Bodin
    •  & Yanick Ricard

  • Letter |

    Synchrotron Mössbauer source spectroscopy is used to reveal that haematite remains magnetic in cold subducting slabs at the depth of the transition zone in the Earth’s mantle, with implications for the locations of magnetic poles during inversions of the Earth’s magnetic field.

    • I. Kupenko
    • , G. Aprilis
    •  & C. Sanchez-Valle

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • A. Kurnosov
    • , H. Marquardt
    •  & L. Ziberna

  • Letter |

    Mineral inclusions in blue boron-bearing diamonds reveal that such diamonds are among the deepest diamonds ever found and indicate a viable pathway for the deep-mantle recycling of crustal elements.

    • Evan M. Smith
    • , Steven B. Shirey
    •  & Wuyi Wang

  • Letter |

    Redox conditions and associated defect chemistry rather than water content, as previously thought, strongly influence the seismic properties of olivine, the main constituent mineral of Earth’s upper mantle.

    • C. J. Cline II
    • , U. H. Faul
    •  & I. Jackson

  • Letter |

    A reaction between iron and water at the high pressure and temperature of the lowermost mantle is described that produces hydrogen-bearing iron peroxide, which has the properties expected of the ultralow-velocity zones at Earth’s core–mantle boundary.

    • Jin Liu
    • , Qingyang Hu
    •  & Wendy L. Mao

  • Letter |

    The pyrite-type high-pressure form of FeOOH is predicted from first principles, and found experimentally to be stable under the conditions at the base of the mantle, with implications for transport of water within Earth’s deep interior.

    • Masayuki Nishi
    • , Yasuhiro Kuwayama
    •  & Taku Tsuchiya

  • Letter |

    Experiments show that magnesium oxide can dissolve in core-forming metallic melts at very high temperatures; core formation models suggest that a giant impact during Earth’s accretion could have contributed large amounts of magnesium to the early core, the subsequent exsolution of which would have generated enough gravitational energy to power an early geodynamo and produce an ancient magnetic field.

    • James Badro
    • , Julien Siebert
    •  & Francis Nimmo

  • Letter |

    Using a laser-heated diamond-anvil cell to measure the electrical resistivity of iron under the high temperature and pressure conditions of the Earth’s core yields a value that means Earth’s core has high thermal conductivity, suggesting that its inner core is less than 0.7 billion years old, much younger than thought.

    • Kenji Ohta
    • , Yasuhiro Kuwayama
    •  & Yasuo Ohishi

  • Letter |

    Deformation experiments on lawsonite reveal that unstable fault slip occurs during dehydration reactions with continuous acoustic emission signals; this indicates the potential for unstable frictional sliding in natural lawsonite layers, which could possibly be the source of intermediate-depth earthquakes in cold subduction zones.

    • Keishi Okazaki
    •  & Greg Hirth

  • Letter |

    The dwarf planet (1) Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt, is found to have localized bright areas on its surface; particularly interesting is a bright pit on the floor of the crater Occator that exhibits what is likely to be water ice sublimation, producing crater-bound haze clouds with a diurnal rhythm.

    • A. Nathues
    • , M. Hoffmann
    •  & J.-B. Vincent

  • Letter |

    Based on first-principles resistivity calculations, it was recently concluded that the thermal conductivity of iron in Earth’s core was too high to sustain thermal convection, thus invalidating such geodynamo models; new calculations including electron correlations find that electron–electron scattering is comparable to the electron–phonon scattering at high temperatures in iron, doubling the expected resistivity, and reviving conventional geodynamo models.

    • Peng Zhang
    • , R. E. Cohen
    •  & K. Haule

  • Article |

    Using electron backscattering diffraction maps of deformed olivine to resolve the disclinations at grain boundaries, combined with a disclination-based model of a high-angle tilt boundary in olivine, reveals the missing mechanism for describing plastic flow in polycrystalline olivine: an applied shear induces grain-boundary migration through disclination motion.

    • Patrick Cordier
    • , Sylvie Demouchy
    •  & Claude Fressengeas

  • Article |

    In Earth’s mantle, the shape change of olivine grains depending on temperature and the presence of melt can result in the development of olivine crystallographic preferred orientation during diffusion creep, meaning that the process may be the principal mechanism of mantle flow.

    • Tomonori Miyazaki
    • , Kenta Sueyoshi
    •  & Takehiko Hiraga

  • Letter |

    Measurements of the viscous anisotropy of highly deformed polycrystalline olivine find it to be approximately an order of magnitude larger than that predicted by grain-scale simulations; the maximum degree of anisotropy is reached at geologically low shear strain, such that deforming regions of the Earth’s upper mantle should exhibit significant viscous anisotropy.

    • L. N. Hansen
    • , M. E. Zimmerman
    •  & D. L. Kohlstedt

  • Letter |

    Determination of the shear-wave velocities for silicate perovskite and ferropericlase under the pressure and temperature conditions of the deep lower mantle indicates that perovskite constitutes much more of the lower mantle than predicted by the conventional mantle model and is consistent with the chondritic Earth model.

    • Motohiko Murakami
    • , Yasuo Ohishi
    •  & Kei Hirose

  • Letter |

    This study reports on laboratory-strength measurements of fault core materials from a drill hole located northwest of Parkfield, California, near the southern end of a creeping zone of the San Andreas fault. It is found that the fault is profoundly weak at this location and depth, owing to the presence of the smectite clay mineral saponite—one of the weakest phyllosilicates known. These findings provide strong evidence that deformation of the mechanically unusual creeping portions of the San Andreas fault system is controlled by the presence of weak minerals rather than by high fluid pressure or other proposed mechanisms.

    • David A. Lockner
    • , Carolyn Morrow
    •  & Stephen Hickman

  • News & Views |

    Plate reconstructions show that ancient eruptions of diamond-bearing rocks occurred consistently above a ring-like region of plume-generation zones deep in Earth's mantle. Do such zones remain stationary?

    • David A. D. Evans

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