Claim: Most of Earth’s carbon may be hidden in the planet’s inner core, new model suggests

Watts Up With That?

From the University of Michigan, and the “department of models that can’t ever be verified”, comes this claim

ANN ARBOR–As much as two-thirds of Earth’s carbon may be hidden in the inner core, making it the planet’s largest carbon reservoir, according to a new model that even its backers acknowledge is “provocative and speculative.”

In a paper scheduled for online publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues suggest that iron carbide, Fe7C3, provides a good match for the density and sound velocities of Earth’s inner core under the relevant conditions.

The model, if correct, could help resolve observations that have troubled researchers for decades, according to authors of the PNAS paper.

The first author is Bin Chen, who did much of the work at the University of Michigan before taking a faculty position at the University of Hawaii…

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