Scientists Have Finally Sampled the Most Abundant Material On Earth

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Scientists Have Finally Sampled the Most Abundant Material On Earth

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 1, 2014 @12:28PM from the not-made-out-of-people dept.

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.

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(Mg,Fe)SiO3 by Noah+Haders · 2014-12-01 12:35 · Score: 5, Informative

some info not in the summary or article:
Formula: (Mg,Fe)SiO3
System: Orthorhombic
Name:
Named in 2014 by Chi Ma and Oliver Tschauner in honor of Percy Williams Bridgman [April 21, 1882 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - August 20, 1961 Randolph, New Hampshire, USA], winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1946 for his work in high-pressure physics.
1. Re:(Mg,Fe)SiO3 by PPH · 2014-12-01 17:19 · 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.
Summary is wrong by ShieldW0lf · 2014-12-01 12:40 · Score: 5, Informative

Technically, it's not "on Earth", it's "in Earth".

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-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Re:Wait till they see water! by bjohnson · 2014-12-01 12:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

Compared to the volume of the rest of the planet, much of it consisting of, you guessed it, bridgmanite, water is a very thin film on the surface....water is about 0.02% of the total earths' mass
Re:Wait till they see water! by rudy_wayne · 2014-12-01 12:57 · Score: 5, Funny

I thought stupidity was the most abundant material on earth.
Re:Wait till they see water! by vux984 · 2014-12-01 13:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Similarly bridgmanite is pretty rare on the surface, even if it is the most common by far when you start looking further down.
Re: Cool by vogonity · 2014-12-01 13:21 · Score: 5, Funny

We wrote some poems about it.
Re:Wait till they see water! by careysub · 2014-12-01 13:59 · 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.

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Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Re:Wait till they see water! by turbidostato · 2014-12-01 14:29 · Score: 4, Funny

Wooosssh!
Silly scientists by M0j0_j0j0 · 2014-12-02 01:53 · Score: 5, Funny

The obvious and accpted name should be, Alotofite