Scientists have stumbled upon an entirely new type of water that they are calling Ice-VII, and they believe it is being caused by diamonds deep in the crust of the Earth. The extraordinary discovery could change our understanding of fluid pockets that reside hundreds of miles below the surface of the Earth.

A team of researchers has discovered ice crystals in a diamond. Probably not a huge discovery, you may think, but this ice, names Ice-VII, is coming from the Earth’s mantle and has been supposed, until now, that it only naturally exists on other planets and their moons and can only be made in a lab.

The discovery of Ice VII in mantle diamonds suggests the possibility of the Earth having water pockets in the mantle. What could this mean, and why is this important?

Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth’s crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not known to occur naturally on our planet.

Diamonds, the super-strong and brilliant crystals of carbon atoms produced under the Earth's crushing pressures, are typically valued for their beauty and durability. But scientists also value them for another reason: They contain all kinds of hidden messages about the Earth's mantle. You just need the right tools to read them.

A UNLV scientist has discovered the first direct evidence that fluid water pockets may exist as far as 500 miles deep into the Earth's mantle.

Supervolcanoes have the power to cough up enough ash to coat entire continents. They emit waves of hot gas, rocks and ash that flow down their slopes at speeds so great they strip away vegetation and kill anyone in their path. And they carve vast depressions in the planet, leaving permanent scars.

Imagine a year in Africa that summer never arrives. The sky takes on a gray hue during the day and glows red at night. Flowers do not bloom. Trees die in the winter. Large mammals like antelope become thin, starve and provide little fat to the predators (carnivores and human hunters) that depend on them. Then, this same disheartening cycle repeats itself, year after year. This is a picture of life on earth after the eruption of the super-volcano, Mount Toba in Indonesia, about 74,000 years ago. In a paper published this week in Nature, scientists show that early modern humans on the coast of South Africa thrived through this event.

Deep within the hot interior of the planet, ice lurks. Now, a form of super-compact ice, found embedded in diamonds, offers the first direct clue that there is abundant water more than 610 kilometers deep in the mantle.

Small pockets of water exist deep beneath Earth’s surface, according to an analysis of diamonds belched from hundreds of kilometers within our planet. The work, which also identifies a weird form of crystallized water known as ice VII, suggests that material may circulate more freely at some depths within Earth than previously thought. Geophysical models of that flow, which ultimately influences the frequency of earthquakes driven by the scraping of tectonic plates at Earth’s surface, may need to be substantially tweaked, scientists say. Such models also help scientists estimate the long-term rates of heat flow through Earth’s surface and into space.

Trapped in the rigid structure of diamonds formed deep in the Earth's crust, scientists have discovered a form of water ice that was not previously known to occur naturally on our planet.

Spring time is upon us and that means allergies. UNLV's Pollen Program researchers study everyday ways to help you say good bye to those springtime sneezes. With their help, learn what plants affect you and what parts of the valley to avoid.