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Scientists have diagnosed the Earth with a bizarre geological status known as 'stagnant slabs', meaning tectonic rocks subducted into the fiery hot mantle mysteriously become wedged within the surface.
But researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder believe they have discovered the reason for a glitch in the earth's internal mechanism.
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Using computer simulations of seismic activities under the Ocean Ocean scientists found that slabs of rocky tectonic plates may be stuck "Thin, weak" layer of material.
The hypothesis comes from Wei Mao and Shijie Zhong, whose study is now published in the journal Nature.
The presence of stagnant slabs has intrigued scientists in the United States of America and the United States.
"Although we see these slabs stagnate, they are a recent phenomenon, probably happening in the last 20 million years," Zhong said. "The slabs get deflected and can keep going for a long distance horizontally."
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The existence of rocks moving slower than normal is unlikely to cause great concern. However, it could have some impact on the way we study volcanoes, earthquakes and other seismic activities associated with the Earth's tectonic makeup.
It's almost as if it's been discovered in the planet's so-called "Engine".
"You can think of this mantle convection as a big engine that drives all of what we see on Earth's surface: earthquakes, mountain building, flat tectonics, volcanoes and even earth's magnetic field," Zhong added.
The study co-authored this suspicion that, over a long period of time, the disorders will continue to drop into the Earth's core.
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