Scientists have recently discovered ‘unexpected and strange structures’ very close to the core of planet Earth
A team of researchers says it has used state-of-the-art imaging techniques to discover huge, “unexpected” structures near Earth’s core.
This is but a surprising reminder of how little we know about the interior of the planet where we live.
Vedran Lekić, an associate professor of geology at the University of Maryland who worked on the research, said that “the anomalous structures at the boundary between the core and the mantle are much more widespread than previously thought.”
Lekić’s team used a machine learning algorithm to analyze the seismic of hundreds of earthquakes, collected over decades.
With this data, they have been able to map the Earth’s interior in unprecedented detail, a process they compared to how bats use echolocation to map their environment.
A still “unknown” environment
The team is not yet sure what the large structure near Earth’s core is made up of, but they say it is likely to be an extremely dense and extremely hot rock form.
The surprising finding revealed structures that geologists weren’t even suspicious of, and Lekić hopes that the same technique will continue to shed light on more mysteries about the interior of our world.
“We were surprised to find such a large feature below the Marquesas Islands that we didn’t even know it existed before,” Lekić said.
“This is really exciting, because it shows how the Sequencer algorithm can help us contextualize seismogram data around the world in a way that we couldn’t before.”
What do you think about this discovery? What more surprises await inside our beloved Earth? Leave your comment below.
Source: Futurism
