Skip to main content
Examining the power supplied to Earth's dynamo by magnesium precipitation and radiogenic heat production

Examining the power supplied to Earth's dynamo by magnesium precipitation and radiogenic heat production

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pepi.2023.107073. This is version 1 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Authors

Alfred Wilson , Monica Pozzo, Chris Davies , Andrew Walker , ...  more

Abstract

We examine magnesium and potassium solubility in liquid Fe mixtures, representative of Earth’s core composition, in equilibrium with liquid silicate mixtures representative of an early magma ocean. Our study is based on the calculation of the chemical potentials of MgO and K2O in both phases, using density functional theory. For MgO, we also study stability against precipitation of the solid phase. We use thermal evolution models of the core and mantle to assess whether either radiogenic heating from 40K decay or Mg precipitation from the liquid core can resolve the new core paradox by powering the geodynamo prior to inner core formation. Our...  more

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5BT0S

Subjects

Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Mineral Physics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences

Keywords

new core paradox, metal-slicate partitioning, palaeomagnetism, thermal evolution

Dates

Published: 2023-04-06 02:14

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International