{"id":242159,"date":"2026-08-04T01:23:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T06:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/new-models-shed-light-on-how-an-exotic-phase-of-hydrogen-in-earths-core-may-behave"},"modified":"2026-08-04T01:23:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T06:23:36","slug":"new-models-shed-light-on-how-an-exotic-phase-of-hydrogen-in-earths-core-may-behave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/new-models-shed-light-on-how-an-exotic-phase-of-hydrogen-in-earths-core-may-behave","title":{"rendered":"New models shed light on how an exotic phase of hydrogen in Earth\u2019s core may behave"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

While Earth\u2019s core consists mostly of iron, its density implies that lighter elements are also mixed in. Because hydrogen is abundant in the universe and can mix with iron under certain conditions, scientists suspect it makes up part of the lighter-element composition. Data from earthquakes suggest the inner part of the core also changes with depth, but scientists aren\u2019t sure exactly how this occurs. Now, a new study published<\/a> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i> indicates that hydrogen likely exists in a gradient within the inner and outer core that arises from thermodynamic equilibrium.<\/p>\n

Hydrogen can dissolve into iron under extreme conditions, like the high-temperature, high-pressure conditions in Earth\u2019s core. In the inner core, hydrogen may become superionic<\/a>, allowing it to move through a solid iron crystal structure almost like a liquid. This superionic state does not behave like a conventional solid and can affect the thermodynamic properties of different phases. It\u2019s thought that the inner core has a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) crystal structure, but other elements can take on a body-centered cubic (bcc) phase under similar conditions.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s believed that hydrogen exists in a superionic state in an hcp lattice, it\u2019s not clear whether hydrogen can also exist as a superionic species in a bcc lattice. The study authors say it\u2019s also unclear how hydrogen might influence the competition between hcp and bcc phases in the inner core. It\u2019s also not clear how or whether hydrogen abundance changes between the liquid outer core and the solid inner core. Previous modeling attempts have yielded conflicting results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Earth\u2019s core consists mostly of iron, its density implies that lighter elements are also mixed in. Because hydrogen is abundant in the universe and can mix with iron under certain conditions, scientists suspect it makes up part of the lighter-element composition. Data from earthquakes suggest the inner part of the core also changes with [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}