By: Emma Xing

Recently, scientists recovered the first long section of rocks deep inside the Earth’s mantle, which makes up around 80% of the entire planet and is between Earth’s outer crust and its core.

New research suggests that the mantle could reveal important information about the history of the Earth. Learning this, scientists used an ocean vessel to dig the deepest hole ever dug into the Earth.

However, mantle rocks aren’t easily accessible, unless they are seen in the locations of the Earth’s ocean floor that have gigantic tectonic plates that move slowly, like the Atlantis Massif, an underground mountain where some mantle rocks are exposed.

Because of this, scientists decided to dig a hole there, and successfully dug 1,268 meters below the Atlantic floor, a surprising 1,000 meters deeper than the previous deepest hole.

The researchers theorized that those mantle rocks were similar to the rocks that existed in the very early days of Earth, rather than the ones that are currently seen throughout Earth.

“When we recovered the rocks last year, it was a major achievement in the history of the Earth sciences, but, more than that, its value is in what the cores of mantle rocks could tell us about the makeup and evolution of our planet,” said Professor Johan Lissenberg from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Professor Johan Lissenburg, who is the lead author of the project, also explained that their study is already starting to look at the composition of the mantle by documenting the chemical makeup of the rocks.

Soon, results began to show from the rock samples.

“Our results differ from what we expected,” the professor explained. “There is a lot less of the mineral pyroxene in the rocks, and the rocks have got a very high concentration of magnesium, both of which result from much higher amounts of melting than what we would have predicted.”

Expanding on this study could further improve the understanding of how magma is created and volcanism.