The sunken worlds under the Pacific

They are deep in the mantle. A new way of mapping the interior of our planet makes it possible to detect them. The sunken worlds under the Pacific have yet to be studied.

The Earth’s lithosphere is made up of giant plates that constantly move, generating continental drift. At intervals of 400-600 million years, land masses come together and then separate again. Currently, the Earth is in the middle of the aforementioned cycle. The Atlantic Ocean expands a few centimeters a year. The Pacific is getting smaller and one day it will disappear completely.

Sunken worlds beneath the Pacific are being discovered.
Sunken worlds beneath the Pacific are being discovered.

hidden material

The continental crust is about 40 kilometers thick. The ocean line only has between 6 and 7 kilometers. At the junction of the plates, the thinnest one submerges under the massive one and melts into the mantle, forming subduction zones. The best-known example of the phenomenon is the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The difficulty of studying the lithosphere lies in the fact that there are only indirect research methods. It is impossible to penetrate the interior of the Earth. The propagation speed of seismic waves generated by earthquakes is measured. Something similar to an ultrasound image is obtained, which shows the internal structure of the planet.

This new work was done by geologists from the Zurich Polytechnic School (Switzerland), together with their colleagues from the California Institute of Technology (USA). They combined data from all known wave types. They used the Swiss supercomputer Piz Daint.

This new perspective has led scientists to wonder if there is material hidden in places previously thought to be empty. The mysterious structure was observed, for example, under the western part of the Pacific Ocean.

New technologies have allowed us to better understand our oceans.
New technologies have allowed us to better understand our oceans.

Hidden anomalies

«Thanks to a new high-resolution model, we can see anomalies of this type everywhere in the Earth’s mantle. We don’t know exactly what they are or what material they are made of,” they declare.

For now, scientists can only guess what exactly they saw. According to one version, these are not the remains of subducted plates, but ancient material rich in silicon. It has been preserved in the mantle since its formation, that is, about 4,000 million years ago. The sunken worlds beneath the Pacific could also be clots of iron-rich rocks. Experts are developing new research methods to continue expanding these findings.

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