Congratulations to Researcher Hu Qingyang to win the ALVIN VAV Valkenburg Award in 2020

Hu Qingyang

Researcher at Beijing High -pressure Science Research Center

The winner of the "Scientific Exploration Award" in 2020

The young scholar proposed a new hypothesis in the cause of the "large oxidation incident" in the history of the earth: the generation, gathering and outbreak of iron dioxide from the large scale of the earth deep. If this is the case, then the next time the concentration of the earth's oxygen will rise, is it a new life or a disaster?

The Alvin Van Valkenburg Award is the only award for young scientists by the International High -voltage Science and Technology Promotion Association (Airapt). The prize has attracted much attention in the international high -voltage science field. It is issued every two years. Only one person is awarded each time. Researchers facing various disciplines in the field are open. Young scientists who break through breakthrough work.

(Affected by the epidemic, the awards in 2020 were extended to 2022)

I studied water. My name is "Qing Yang", and its homophonic is "hydrogen and oxygen", so I study water a little bit destined.

First of all, I studied the deep water of the earth, and then the specific point is to study the water under the earth, and then the specific point refers to the water within the range of 1,700 kilometers from the earth and to the border of the nuclear mantle.

I want to share with you the depth of the earth, which can be compared to a huge chemical laboratory. With water, there are a lot of chemical reactions that will happen, and some of them are unexpected and dare not even think of it before.

Why is it important to study (Earth) deep water? I will use a 2018 report as an introduction.

The University of Washington analyzed the earthquake waves on the Mariana Trench. They found that a large amount of water will be inhaled inside the earth every year. Note that they used the verb "inhalation" here, referring to the depths of these water into the deep part of the earth, but I don't know where the water finally goes?

Now some of the latest views believe that hundreds of millions of tons of water will enter the mantle of the earth each year, and the total amount should sound a lot, but I have a metaphor. A Pacific Ocean has 73 billion tons of water. Compared with the total amount of water on the surface of our earth, it is still a small part. Of course, don't forget that the age of the earth is calculated in the units of billions of years. If the two are multiplied, it is actually a considerable number.

Therefore, if there is always water to enter the depth of the earth, but there is no water from the deep part of the earth, bringing a problem: the earth will gradually become a dry planet.

But fortunately, we have not found that there is any phenomenon that the earth is exhausted in large areas. Why? It is because the deep part of the earth really exists such a magnificent water cycle, and it is affecting our daily life.

If we want to explain the water in the deep part of the earth, how to return from the deep to the ground, we must introduce our second protagonist: that is, iron.

Iron is compared with weight in the earth. It is the highest content of such an element.

Everyone should have eaten this kind of chocolate ball. If we compare the earth as a chocolate, the fruit kernels are like a ground nucleus. It is basically composed of iron. The outermost is a thin layer of crust.

If water enters the earth, what will happen when meeting with iron? Everyone may naturally think of rust? Because rust we are familiar with daily life, it is water when water is met, and then under the action of air, a layer of iron oxide will be generated on the surface.

When water enters the deep part of the earth and encounters iron, what will happen?

The first thing that everyone may think of this topic is whether we should have a deep well, and then drill into the earth, take some samples, and then make some analysis?

But in fact, the deepest kind of well is only over 10 kilometers, which is less than the fur of the earth; but in fact we can also use some such as the volcanic process, from the inside of the earth, there are some so -called parcels come out of the earth. These samples The seal is called in the diamond, which is called a diamond parcel, but the deepest sample is the level of several hundred kilometers. It is almost the upper part of the mantle, and there is no way to cover the entire mantle. We changed our thinking in the laboratory. We polished a pair of diamonds, then polished it into a cone, put the sample in the middle, and then force it on both sides. A lot of pressure, such a sample can cover the pressure range of the entire mantle, and even do some scientific work of the ground nuclear.

This is a scene of our experiments. You can see that this is a pair of diamonds. Today I will bring such a device. This thing in my hand is a diamond stew, and it is not a model. It is so small that can be taken out directly from my pocket.

Everyone may ask it if it is dangerous because it is very stressful. But in fact, because the pressure is concentrated on a small little sample, the most uninstalled situation is that diamonds have some dislocation, and the diamond is abolished, but it is actually very safe.

Maybe you are more curious about whether this device is expensive? I just hit a less appropriate metaphor. The price of using this diamond a year may not be as good as a square meter of house prices around our unit.

As long as enough pressure is applied on this sample, some unique chemical reactions can occur with iron and water.

The main component of the rust mentioned earlier is iron oxides. In the normal pressure, there are actually three main iron oxides.

This red one is called tritermia two iron; then the black one is a magnetite, the main component is the four oxidation of the three iron;

However, inside the earth, the chemical bonds between iron and oxygen will have some qualitative changes, and there will be some new iron oxides, such as the iron dioxide we want to mention. It is such a kind of iron oxide that can exist in the deep part of the earth. How did iron dioxide discovered in the deep part of the earth?

This must be used to use the diamond stew we mentioned earlier. In this picture on the left is the sample of iron and water, and then we press this sample to 700,000 atmospheric pressure, and then use laser to heat it to simulate the 1700 kilometers of the Earth's deep part. The environment, then we found that the iron dioxide was generated inside through some representation methods.

The characteristics of iron dioxide are more oxygen. We can imagine that some additional oxygen is hit into the iron oxide, and then it is also a stable only under high pressure. If we withdraw the pressure, it will then it will again. Re -become a triple oxidation two iron and release oxygen.

At that time, we synthetic this iron dioxide was quite excited. Basically, the whole article was written within a week. Why? It is because iron dioxide is the most critical component we want to propose this hypothesis.

The name we hypothesis is called "deep oxygen making theory". In this picture, we held some chemical reaction equations. The traditional point of view believes that there is a water cycle deep in the deep earth, but the simplest unit of water circulation should be water. Hydrogen and oxygen.

Our hypothesis -Deep oxygen is that below 1700 kilometers, water can be decomposed. With the help of iron, oxygen and iron combine to generate iron dioxide, and then hydrogen runs away. So these two theories have a certain difference here. How do we apply this theory?

Let's cut a section for the earth, and then see how water is involved in the deep part of the earth and completes this cycle. Because below 1700 kilometers, water can be divided into hydrogen and oxygen, so we can be divided into two parts to discuss it.

Among them, the combination of oxygen and iron becomes iron dioxide together. We can use iron dioxide as a more representative mineral. We call it an oxygen -rich phase. It can exist stable when below 1700 kilometers, but once it enters the shallow part, it will break down, so as long as it is stored in that depth, it can be accumulated all the time, and then it can firmly suck oxygen;

What about hydrogen? Hydrogen can spread freely in minerals. In physicists, they call it a state of "super ionic state". This is also a special state that will be under high temperature and high pressure. It is like a piece of piece. Sponge, absorbing a lot of liquid hydrogen. At first glance, this sponge is still solid, but as long as we squeeze, the liquid hydrogen will come out, but because of the hydrogen, it has a small proportion of itself, so it will rise to rise. In the process of rising, it will reorganize with other minerals to generate water.

Here we should pay special attention to this process of combination not to say that free hydrogen combines with free oxygen, but through some complex chemical effects, some oxidation and restoration effects, so that hydrogen and oxygen are combined. For example, it will generate some hydrocarbon compounds. These hydrocarbons are the prototype of some organic objects, and the remaining hydrogen will be directly excluded into the atmosphere through volcanic effects. This is the entire journey of the water depicted through the deep oxygen -making theory on the earth.

Everyone may ask: The iron dioxide is slowly accumulated in the deep part of the earth. Will some changes happen when it reaches the critical point?

Let me take an example. You can refer to it. In 1986, Cameroon had a place called Lake Nipos. An eruption occurred at the bottom of the lake, and it erupted a large amount of carbon dioxide gas. Because the proportion of carbon dioxide gas is heavier than air, when the carbon dioxide gas landed again, it will flood to a nearby village, and then discharge the surrounding air, which eventually causes thousands of people to suffocate.

Although there are still some controversy in the specific cause of this disaster, one thing is certain that the carbon dioxide has accumulated a critical value at the bottom of the Lake of Neosos, which eventually leads to its eruption.

The iron dioxide is in the deep part of the earth, and the critical value will occur, which will allow these iron dioxide to enter the shallow part from the deep part, decompose, and release oxygen.

In the entire hundreds of billions of years of the earth, there are indeed such special periods, and the concentration of oxygen will increase, and we call it a "large oxidation incident".

On the right side of this picture, I made a picture of the oxygen content with the earth of the earth. We found that there are so many special periods in the entire history. Such a process.

In fact, there are many doctrines in explaining the oxidation incident. For example, the most popular is the "oxygen production mechanism of cyanobacteria".

Candidae, which can produce a lot of oxygen, and after so many years of research, I think its general direction should have no errors, but can cyanobacterium algae explain all the problems about large oxidation events? In fact, the time of the large oxidation incident it has experienced. If compared with the entire history of the earth, it should be relatively short. It can be said that it is a sudden event. The earliest cyanobacteria should be born 33 million years ago, and This is a billion years away from the first major oxidation incident.

The oxygen concentration rises suddenly, it should be a mystery itself. Here I boldly list the "deep oxygen theory" and "oxygen production mechanism of cyanobacteria" we proposed on a picture.

Our "Deep Oxygen Creating theory", in fact, the core is the accumulation of this kind of oxygen -rich phase represented by iron dioxide in the deep part of the earth. After reaching the critical point, a sudden outbreak occurs. Such a process;

The "oxygen production mechanism of cyanobacteria" in sharp contrast, which is a sustainable and stable;

And our "deep oxygen theory", it also has a feature that can analyze the frequency of past oxygen fluctuations, and it can also predict the time of the next oxygen fluctuation. Because the size of the warehouse in the deep storage of oxygen in the earth is actually certain. What will happen if this oxygen fluctuations appear again in hundreds of years?

Let's review history. The first major oxidation incident was born of aerobic creatures. The second -generation oxygen increase incident occurred 6-700 million years ago. It caused senior creatures to occur on the earth. There are five biostatic extinction.

Each biostatic extinction will cause more than half, even most of the creatures. However, it happened that the extinction of each organism was related to the sudden rise or decline of oxygen. If we count the last biostatic extinction 66 million years ago, according to this frequency, then the next oxygen fluctuation may not be too far.

What will happen to the next oxygen fluctuations, will it make the life on the earth a re -reshuffle, and will humans repeat the mistakes of dinosaurs? These issues hope that everyone can go back and consider.

In fact, I especially want to say that the theory we put forward belongs to a hypothesis. The essence of the hypothesis is that it also needs a lot of experiments and many data to support.

When we completed this work in 2016, we first contributed. The first thing we thought of submitting was the magazine of "Science", and it was immediately rejected.

But in fact, if you think about it, if the things we think are exactly the same as the previous traditional theory, it is very good for these traditional editors, the reviewer, and the appetite for them. This is so big, but this also inspires us to do more work, and then slowly improve our hypothesis.

From 2016 to 2021, our work has been carried out. After being rejected by "Science", we switched to "Nature" and was immediately received.

So I started to attract some people to repeat our work. So far, we have experienced almost five years, and then we have solved some more challenging projects.

For example, we later discovered that this iron dioxide can contain a small amount of hydrogen, and then we have made some chemical analysis on the iron dioxide, and found that the iron inside is actually a positive two -price price. It's hard to improve it. I would like to thank my mentor Mr. Mao Heguang, which is nearly 80 years old, but it is still active on the front line of scientific research. He is also the entire high -voltage science Taishan Beidou.

I also want to thank the Professor of West True, the University of Ehime, Japan. When we were published at the time, Professor Xizhenzhizhi had strictly criticized our work. He felt that our results should be wrong, because in their opinion, water should be the smallest unit, no matter what depth, it will never decompose and become hydrogen and oxygen.

It is precisely because of the incentives and spurring of Professor Xizhen, or we have to answer many questions he raised in a short period of time, and many questions are tricky.

But because of this, and attracted everyone's attention, many research teams began to repeat our work, and then repeated success. In recent years, we have also started to correct some of our theories and have added some more tolerance.

Until now, we do feel the attitude of Professor West Zhenzhi's article in his article has gradually softened, and even the recent article has been relatively similar or even consistent with our point of view. "Afterwards, I felt more pleased.

In fact, deep oxygen is not only to explain something inside the earth, but it can also be applied to the planet, such as Mars.

We know that water is a very important factor that life can exist. If we transfer some water on the earth to Mars, or find a lot of ice inside Mars, and then use some transformations whether to turn Mars into the next earth can be turned into the next earth. Woolen cloth?

Unfortunately, if it is based on our deep oxygen, this is not easy to do. Because of Mars, its radius is almost half of the earth, so it should not exist like the deep water circulation like the earth. There is no way to form iron dioxide, and then erupted to the surface of Mars to form this atmosphere of oxygen -rich.

But we should not underestimate human curiosity. In fact, science itself is a more open topic, and many things are advancing in exploration.

From a historical perspective, from the heart of the earth to the heart of the heart, then there are Fermi paradox, the theory of the section, etc. These hypotheses are raised at the beginning. of;

However, there are still some assumptions that were popular at the time, but in the end, but in the end, the assumptions disappeared, such as the 1950s and 1960s, the theory of steady -state and the theory of the Big Bang was all the same -such two theories about explaining the origin of the universe until the background of the universe The proposal and verification of radiation, the theory of Big Bang enters the mainstream;

And four years ago, someone proposed a new hypothesis, called the bouncing universe model. Maybe after decades, it may be better than the Big Bang theory, and it may become the Big Bang theory 2.0.

In fact, science is advancing in the spiral of confirmation and falsification. Most of the jobs are actually unknown, and even little known. I hope our hypothesis can be a stepping stone for everyone.

Science can have no national borders, but scientists have nationality. I hope that our work today can achieve a grand theory of a genius in China.

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