How does the Earth work inside ? What happens every day in the Earth's mantle, made up of semi-solid materials that slowly flow under the thin outer crust? Incredible as it may seem, this is the question that ESA astronaut André Kuipers is going to answer through an experiment carried out quite far from our planet, specifically from the International Space Station, some 400 kilometers high. So far Geoflow has taken with him, a device that mimics the structure of a planet with two concentric rotating spheres, separated by a layer of liquid.
The inner sphere represents the nucleus, while the outer sphere acts as the crust. The fluid that separates them, object of study, simulates the behavior of the mantle. Free from the influence of Earth's gravity, the experiment uses a high-voltage electric field to simulate a gravitational field between the two spheres .
André has been able to see how hydrodynamic feathers were formed that rose towards the outer sphere, just as the simulations predicted. The mantle plume theory suggests that these columns of hot material could be responsible for the formation of structures such as the volcanic islands of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
The Geoflow results will not only help to better understand how our planet works, but could also find a direct application in the industry, improving the design of spherical gyros, bearings or centrifugal pumps among others.
