LONDON, July 6 (Xinhua) -- An international team of researchers have carried out sophisticated experiments to replicate conditions at the Earth's core, shedding light on how the Earth was formed from elements in space some 10 billion years ago, according to a study released on Friday by the University of Edinburgh.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh along with colleagues in China and the United States, have used high energy laser beams and optical sensors to observe how samples of nitrogen behaved at more than one million times normal atmospheric pressure and temperatures above 3,000 degrees Celsius.
Their observations confirmed that, under such conditions, nitrogen exists as a liquid metal. The findings give scientists valuable insight into how nitrogen behaves at extreme conditions, which could aid understanding of how the planets were formed.
It may help explain why Earth is the only planet known to have an abundance of nitrogen in its atmosphere -- where it exists as a gas.
Earth's atmosphere is the only one of all the planets where nitrogen is the main ingredient -- greater even than oxygen. "Our study shows this nitrogen could have emerged from deep inside the planet," said Dr Stewart McWilliams from the University of Edinburgh.
The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
