Physicists have revealed the structure of one of the nickel components of the Earth’s core
Scientists have uncovered the structure of a conductive form of nickel oxide previously discovered by them, which is presumably present in the Earth’s core, the press service of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) reported.
“The obtained <…> results are very important <…> for understanding the fundamental properties of this kind of insulators <…> for geophysics and studies of the structure of the Earth,” said Alexander Gavrilyuk, senior researcher at INR RAS ( Troitsk ) .
It is noted that nickel oxide under normal conditions is not able to conduct electric current.
However, in the middle of the 20th century, the English physicist Neville Mott predicted that nickel oxide could transform into a metallic state at high pressure.
Scientists tried to prove the transition described by Mott, but this problem was solved only 10 years ago by physicists from the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( Moscow ).
They found that after being compressed to 2.4 million atmospheres, the nickel monoxide crystals go into a new state and begin to conduct current.
Previously, seismologists estimated the size of the central part of the Earth’s inner core at 650 km.
