X-ray facility to study conditions at Earth’s core
NOV 11, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025700
BBC : Earth’s core lies about 1900 miles below sea level, beyond the reach of direct observation. To re-create conditions there, an experiment at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) will subject iron and other materials to intense pressure using diamond anvil cells, which compress tiny material samples between the points of two diamonds. The compressed samples will then be heated to more than 10 000 °C with lasers fired through the diamonds, and x rays will probe the samples to give high-resolution snapshots of the reactions that occur as the samples are heated and squeezed. How the materials absorb the x rays should give clues to how Earth’s magnetic field is formed, why it changes, and how shock waves propagate through it.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
