Scientists have uncovered the structure of a conductive form of nickel oxide that they had previously discovered and likely found in the Earth’s core, the press service of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) reported.
“Accepted <…> results are very important <…> Understanding the basic properties of such insulators <…> “For research on geophysics and the structure of the Earth,” said Alexander Gavrilyuk, Senior Research Fellow at INR RAS (Troitsk).
It is stated that under normal conditions, nickel oxide cannot conduct electric current.
But in the mid-20th century, British physicist Neville Mott predicted that nickel oxide could transform into a metallic state at high pressure.
Scientists tried to prove the transition described by Mott, but this problem was solved only 10 years ago by physicists from the Nuclear Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).
They found that after the nickel monoxide crystals were compressed into 2.4 million atmospheres, they switched to a new state and began conducting current.
Formerly seismologists discretion The size of the middle part of the Earth’s inner core is 650 km.