Xi'an University of Technology team reveals the mystery of early Earth magma ocean solidification.

Journalists learned on the 24th from Northwestern Polytechnical University that Professor Niu Haiyang's team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the National Key Laboratory of Solidification Technology have discovered that under the conditions of slow cooling of deep magma oceans in the early Earth, bridgmanite does not crystallize into tiny particles as traditionally assumed, but has the opportunity to grow into "giant crystals" ranging from centimeters to meters in size. Once these giant crystals form, they may significantly change the way magma oceans solidify, thereby driving early layering and chemical differentiation of the mantle, providing a new physical picture for understanding the anomalous structures preserved in the deep Earth for long periods of time. This study focuses on the critical question of "how early Earth magma oceans crystallize and solidify" in planetary science, and was jointly completed by a research team composed of Northwestern Polytechnical University, Princeton University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. The relevant results were published online in the journal "Nature."