An ancient event has partially melted the Earth’s crust, creating fissures that allow helium-3, a treasure from the planet’s core, to gradually escape.
New research from the University of New Mexico (USA) reveals that a rare type of helium (helium-3) belonging to the primordial universe, formed 13.8 billion years ago, is actually hidden within the Earth’s core and is continuously seeping out through various cracks.
Earth’s core leaking, “releasing” helium-3 that holds many secrets about planet formation – (Photo: Shutterstock).
According to Live Science, most of the helium-3 in the universe was created shortly after the Big Bang. Some primordial helium-3 combined with other gas and dust particles in the Solar Nebula—a molecular cloud from which the Sun and other planets formed.
This discovery simultaneously reinforces the hypothesis that Earth formed very early in the primordial stages of the Solar System, during the active phase of the Solar Nebula, rather than being a “late-forming” planet when the nebula had already weakened.
Geophysicist Peter Olson, the lead author of the study, explained that helium-3 is an isotope of helium with only one neutron in its nucleus, instead of two. It is an extremely rare gas, constituting only 0.0001% of the total helium on Earth.
The new study indicates that approximately 2 kg of helium-3 escapes from the Earth’s core, leaking to the surface each year, primarily along the mid-ocean ridge system, where tectonic plates meet.
Scientists cannot accurately determine how much helium-3 comes from the core versus how much comes from the mantle, nor how much of this “treasure” from the primordial universe remains buried within our planet. However, based on leakage models, there must be at least 10 million to 1 billion tons of helium-3 hidden in the core.
This leakage could date back over 4 billion years, when a planet the size of Mars collided with Earth, ejecting a cloud of gas and dust that later coalesced to form the Moon. This event melted part of the original Earth’s crust, providing a pathway for helium-3 to reach the surface.
By tracing this treasure, scientists hope to answer many questions related to the origins and formation of our planet.
The study was recently published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
