There are indeed sulfur in the core of the Earth, French researchers reveals. A result that comes to solve an old mystery: the “lightness” of the Earth’s core, so far unexplained.

Geologists have long faced a conundrum: that of the mass of the Earth’s core, the seismic measurements made during recent decades indicate that it is all too little evidence to be only made of pure iron and nickel, which are known to represent the main constituents of the core.

How to explain this “lightness” of the earth’s core? So far, researchers postulated the presence in the nucleus of chemical elements that weigh less than iron and nickel, such as carbon, oxygen … or sulfur.

However, the Earth’s core is completely inaccessible to any withdrawal, it was so far impossible to know these lighter component elements. And it is precisely this question that researchers at the “Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (CNRS / IPGP / Université Paris Diderot)” are responding to.

Indeed, they first succeeded in establishing proof of presence of sulfur in the Earth’s core, through analyses of brass from the crust and mantle.