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Researchers have discovered huge, mysterious masses of dense rock that lurk deep within the lower parts of our planet’s mantle.
There are two types of these gigantic masses – called large low shear rate counties (LLSVP) – one buried under Africa and the other under the Pacific Ocean.
These anomalies are so huge that they in turn generate their own disturbances, like the great phenomenon that is currently developing in and weakening the Earth’s magnetic field, known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.
As to how and why LLSVPs came into the mantle, scientists have a lot of ideas and little physical evidence.
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These gigantic dots have been around for a very long time, as many believe they have been part of Earth since before the giant collision that gave birth to the moon – ancient relics of the collision between Earth and the hypothetical planet Theia.
According to this widely held argument, “Theia”, the size of Mars, struck Earth very early about 4.5 billion years ago, with much of “Theia” and / or possibly some of the Earth separated, and the moon we know today is orbiting the Earth.
As to what happened to the rest of Theia, it’s not certain. Was it destroyed or was it just returning to the eternity of space? we do not know.
Some researchers have suggested that the nuclei of these two primordial planets may have merged into one and that it was the chemical exchanges brought about by this epic fusion that allowed life itself to flourish in the resulting world.
Now, scientists have come back to these huge questions with a new proposal, an idea that also reconciles the mysterious points of LLSVP and integrates them into the hybrid Earth / Thea hypothesis.
According to new modeling from researchers at Arizona State University (ASU), LLSVP could represent ancient fragments of the extremely dense, iron-rich Thea mantle, which sank deep into the Earth’s mantle as the two developing worlds collided. are gathered and were buried there. for billions of years.
The researchers, led by senior author Qian Yuan, a doctoral student who studies mantle dynamics at Arizona State University, said. In a summary of their findings presented last week at the Planetary and Lunar Science Conference: “The gigantic impact hypothesis is one of the most examined models of lunar formation, but direct evidence indicating the presence of the collider, Theia, remain elusive. denser than the Earth’s mantle, allowing THIA mantle materials to sink into the Earth’s mantle and accumulate in thermochemical piles that can cause LLSVP detected by an earthquake.
And while it has been speculated for years that LLSVP might be a strange memory planted by Thea, the new research appears to be the most comprehensive formulation yet. The results are currently under review, before their future publication in geophysical research letters.
In addition to mantle modeling, the results are also consistent with previous research indicating that some of the chemical signatures associated with LLSVP are at least as primitive as the Thea effect.
Researchers will have to wait for how the rest of the scientific community reacts to the findings, but for now at least we have another clue as to what these mysterious anomalies could be – literally the most advanced explanation yet.
The results were presented at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which unfolded as a hypothetical event last week.
Source: ScienceAlert
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