Explaining Deep Earth via Quantum Mechanics.

• Position: GEOSCIENCE

Our planet is full of mysteries. How exactly did Earth form and evolve to its current state? Why do some places in its interior seem hotter or colder, rising or sinking? For answers, geoscientists experiment on materials expected to be found in Earth's interior, but these exist at immense pressures and temperatures that are impractical to reproduce in the lab.

Renata Wentzcovitch, a condensed matter physicist at New York's Columbia University, indicates quantum simulations can help. "Nature is quantum," says Wentzcovitch, a professor in the Department of Engineering and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

Quantum mechanics is a theory concerned with the wave-like motion of minuscule particles, like electrons circling an atom. Atoms and their electrons combine into molecules that form materials that make up the Earth--all of which have quantum properties. Although quantum mechanical equations can be applied to any material, they most often are invoked to describe phenomena that cannot be understood with classical physics, she explains.

To understand the deep Earth's evolution and current state, researchers must combine information about its material composition with the effects of external forces like temperature...