A Science Advances study found hydrogen, helium and tungsten are rising from Earth’s core into the mantle, showing the planet’s deep interior is still chemically exchanging material.
Machine-learning-assisted path-integral simulations showed early magma-ocean crystallization would have left the deep mantle with largely uniform hydrogen isotope ratios, not the low deuterium-to-hydrogen signatures seen in some deep-source lavas.
ocean island basalts from places including Iceland and Baffin Island match the leakage model: low D/H ratios point to light primordial hydrogen, high helium-3 to helium-4 suggests nebular helium, and tungsten isotopes trace core material.
The team said the evidence argues present-day deep-mantle chemistry is not just a 4.5-billion-year-old relic of Earth’s formation but has been reshaped by ongoing core-mantle exchange.