Researchers dig out astonishing details about an entire planet buried deep in the Earth's core

There might not be any physical tool that is capable of boring deep into the Earth's core but researchers by Caltech have stumbled upon the possibility that our planet's core might hold remains from an ancient planet, according to indy100.

The research published at the end of 2023 in the Nature journal, mentions that billions of years ago a planet named Theia could have collided with Earth and the newly discovered blobs deep inside the Earth's crust are the potential remains of the same. These blobs were first discovered back in the 1980s and their structure and size are similar to those of the continents on Earth and the old planet is around twice the size of the Moon.

The research team has located them deep beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean and these blobs have high iron content. As a result, seismic waves pass through them at a slower rate. They are labeled as “large low-velocity provinces” or LLVPs. This particular study argues that the collision of Theia with Earth caused the creation of the Moon and another new study argues that the "planet was absorbed into the Earth and formed the LLVPs."

“Seismic images of Earth’s interior have revealed two continent-sized anomalies with low seismic velocities, known as the large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), in the lowermost mantle,” researchers wrote, as per the outlet. “The LLVPs are often interpreted as intrinsically dense heterogeneities that are compositionally distinct from the surrounding mantle. Here we show that LLVPs may represent buried relics of Theia mantle material (TMM) that was preserved in proto-Earth’s mantle after the Moon-forming giant impact."

“Our canonical giant-impact simulations show that a fraction of Theia’s mantle could have been delivered to proto-Earth’s solid lower mantle,” the research added. Their mantle convection models showed that dense TMM blobs sized tens of kilometers after the impact, could've later sunk into LLVP-like thermochemical piles atop Earth’s core. "The LLVPs may, thus, be a natural consequence of the Moon-forming giant impact. Because giant impacts are common at the end stages of planet accretion, similar mantle heterogeneities caused by impacts may also exist in the interiors of other planetary bodies," the study concluded.

This comes after a research team from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois discovered a vast water reservoir beneath the Earth's surface. The details about the water reservoir about 700 kilometers from Earth's crust were compiled in a 2014 study report titled "Dehydration Melting At The Top Of The Lower Mantle," per News 18. It was also revealed that the water body is underneath a mass of blue rock called ringwoodite. 

“It’s good evidence that the Earth’s water came from within,” Steven Jacobsen of Northwestern University, told New Scientist back in 2014. “They make the Earth ring like a bell for days afterward," he added. Jacobsen and his team used 2000 seismometers to analyze seismic waves from over 500 earthquakes. These waves traverse Earth’s interior to reach the core and his team was able to detect the results at the surface. The reservoir is said to hold three times the volume of all the oceans on Earth's surface and the research could help explain where our current water bodies came from.