12 Feb
2014
12 Feb
'14
3:18 p.m.
FeO is an insulator which is common inside rocks. It becomes metallic (electrically conductive) at high pressure (70 GPa) and temperature (1900 K). [Kenji Ohta, R. E. Cohen, Kei Hirose, Kristjan Haule, Katsuya Shimizu, Yasuo Ohishi: Experimental and Theoretical Evidence for Pressure-Induced Metallization in FeO with Rocksalt-Type Structure, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 (2012) 026403.] Watch out -- such findings might radically change the picture of how Earth magnetic field is generated... It turns out people have been trying to do numerical simulation of the "geodynamo" e.g. see http://emerald.ucsc.edu/~glatz/pub/olson_etal_jgr_1999.pdf http://www.ipgp.fr/~dormy/Publications/DVC00.pdf