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Scientists Have Finally Sampled the Most Abundant Material On Earth

rossgneumann writes: The most abundant material on Earth didn't have a name, and, in fact, hadn't been seen — until now. For the first time ever, scientists have gotten their hands on a sample of bridgmanite, a mineral that is believed to make up more than a third of the volume of the Earth. In a new paper published in Science late last week, Oliver Tschauner of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and his team describe bridgmanite for the first time.

2 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wait till they see water! by careysub · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Water is in fact, therefore, pretty scarce on Earth.

    That's like arguing the material a balloon is made of is scarce on a balloon. Its true that there's not much of it in the total volume of a balloon. But it still makes up pretty much 100% of the surface area ON a balloon.

    ...

    Two strikes for you - first you make a poor analogy (In a completely deflated state the rubber is the entire volume and mass of the balloon), and second you missed the opportunity to make it a car analogy.

    A better analogy would be that paint (or enamel) is pretty scarce on a car since such a tiny fraction of its total mass consists of paint, even though us "surfacists" consider the paint a very important characteristic of the car.

    --
    Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
  2. Re:(Mg,Fe)SiO3 by PPH · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Interesting.

    But the summary is slightly misleding. The stuff they found came from a shocked meteorite. And it fits the theoretical models of the makeup of the lower mantle. But it sounds like we still haven't gotten a significant sample from inside the earth to validate the theory.

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    Have gnu, will travel.