The monstrous 'blobs' near Earth's core may be even bigger than we thought

[Judi Lynn]

By Brandon Specktor 10 hours ago

The mysterious 'blobs' near Earth's core just got a little bigger.



Earthquakes (stars) send seismic waves rippling through the planet. Seismometers (blue triangles) detect them on the other side. Thirty years of seismic data revealed where those seismic waves slowed down (purple and orange splotches), pointing to mysterious inner-Earth structures called ultralow-velocity zones.
(Image: © Doyeon Kim/University of Maryland)

Deep within Earth, where the solid mantle meets the molten outer core, strange continent-size blobs of hot rock jut out for hundreds of miles in every direction. These underground mountains go by many names: "thermo-chemical piles," "large low-shear velocity provinces" (LLSVPs), or sometimes just "the blobs."

Geologists don't know much about where these blobs came from or what they are, but they do know that they're gargantuan. The two biggest blobs, which sit deep below the Pacific Ocean and Africa, account for nearly 10% of the entire mantle's mass, one 2016 study found — and, if they sat on Earth's surface, the duo would each extend about 100 times higher than Mount Everest. However, new research suggests, even those lofty analogies may be underestimating just how big the blobs really are.

In a study published June 12 in the journal Science, researchers analyzed the seismic waves generated by earthquakes over nearly 30 years. They found several massive, never before-detected features along the edges of the Pacific blob.

"The structures we located are … thousands of kilometers across in scale," lead study author Doyeon Kim, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, told Live Science in an email. According to Kim, that's an order of magnitude larger than typical features found along the blob's edge.

More:
https://www.space.com/earth-core-mantle-ulvz-blobs-enormous.html?utm_source=notification

[soothsayer]

1. Cthulhu! And the others (don't name them)

[AllaN01Bear]

2. very interestink.

science rocks

[Karadeniz]

3. So..not magma?

[keithbvadu2]

4. It's a competition of discovering outer space new findings and inner space new findings.

It's a competition of discovering outer space new findings and inner space new findings.

The more we learn, the more we find that we don't know.

Just like medicine and the human body.

[Javaman]

5. ...