Using Particle Physics and Geo-Electrons To Probe The Deep Layers of The Earth

The picture depicts the long-range spin-spin interaction (blue wavy lines) in which the spin-sensitive detector on Earth’s surface interacts with geoelectrons (red dots) deep in Earth’s mantle. The arrows on the geoelectrons indicate their spin orientations, opposite that of Earth’s magnetic field lines (white arcs).
Credit: Marc Airhart (University of Texas at Austin) and Steve Jacobsen (Northwestern University).

Researchers have come up with a new technique using particle physics and geo-electrons to find out in great detail what the deep layers of the Earth is made up of and how it behaves.

Scientists for a long time have been trying to understand more about the Earth's core. The surface of the Earth is known as the crust and is around 10 kilometers thick at its thinnest. Below the crust is the mantle and between the mantle and the inner core, it is around 3,000 kilometers. It is impossible by current technologies to even drill past the crust.

In November 2011, Japanese scientist Kei Hirose, used a particle accelerator (the Spring-8 Synchrotron) to recreate the conditions believed to exist at the Earth's core. The experiment suggests that the core is made up of a forest of huge crystals 10 kilometers tall.

Other techniques used to study the Earth's inner layers are by studying the vibrations caused by earthquakes, using x-rays and other imaging techniques, or by mimicking the temperatures and pressures of the deep Earth in laboratories.

Now, researchers from Amherst College and The University of Texas at Austin have developed another technique to solve this geological mystery not by recreating the conditions but by studying electrons found in mantle minerals called geoelectrons.