Research team to explore depths of Earth's mantle

A professor at Delaware State University, Dr. Gabriel Gwanmesia, received a $672,000 grant to study the minerals in the Earth's mantle, hundreds of miles beneath the surface, and he recently joined AccuWeather Prime to talk about what information he is seeking.

The grant comes from the National Science Foundation, as part of an Earth Sciences initiative and an Excellence in Research program. The latter supports research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Gwanmesia explained that the study will look at minerals and their properties. The research will then compare that with data obtained from earthquakes to give insight into how earthquakes and other hazards, like volcanic activity, occur in the Earth.

Gwanmesia, who is originally from Cameroon, initially wanted to study geophysics but ended up at Stony Brook University. A professor there introduced Gwanmesia to high-pressure devices, which are the same devices that this Delaware State research team will use to replicate the conditions at the center of the Earth.

Dr. Gabriel Gwanmesia (AccuWeather)

Beyond its implications in understanding earthquakes and related phenomena, the research could also raise findings connected to water -- possibly a whole reservoir found within the minerals of the mantle. Gwanmesia explained that water can be embedded in the mineral that the lab will be studying.

"Because of the abundance of the mineral inside the Earth, in that region between 400 and 600 kilometers, we believe that there is so much water in those minerals that if we put them together, we could extract them," Gwanmesia said. "There will be more water than all of the water in the oceans of the Earth."

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Gwanmesia added that there aren't many people from historically marginalized groups in his field.

"In the area of mineral physics, high-pressure physics, in which I am involved, there are no minority. In fact, for the several years that I've been, we are only about two or three with a PhD degree in this field," Gwanmesia said. "Therefore, it's important to bring young people and train them in the field."

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