Science perspective: 'Peeling Back the Layers in Earth’s Mantle'

We used global observations of SS precursors to study the 520-km discontinuity in detail, and found that in some regions this discontinuity is ‘split’ into two, resulting in discontinuities around 510 and 560 km depth. These observations require the existence of a phase transition in garnet in addition to the olivine phase transition from wadsleite to ringwoodite.

Our work was published in Science on 21 October 2001, ‘Seismic Observations of Splitting of the Mid-Transition Zone Discontinuity in Earth’s Mantle’ by Arwen Deuss, Simon Redfern, Kit Chambers and John Woodhouse. Read here.

The paper was accompanied by a Perspective in Science article by John Vidale (Vidale, J.E., 2001, “Peeling back the layers in Earth’s mantle”, Science 294, no 5541, p313).