Meet the mysterious electrides
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav For close to a century, geoscientists have pondered a mystery: Where did Earth’s lighter elements go? Compared to amounts in the Sun and in some meteorites, Earth has less hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur, as well as noble gases like helium—in some cases, more than 99 percent less. Some of the disparity is explained by losses to the solar system as our planet formed. But researchers have long suspected that something else was going on too. Recently, a team of scientists reported a possible explanation—that the elements are hiding deep in the solid inner core of Earth. At its super-high…
