The blobs are located near the boundary with Earth’s core, researchers said.
Mysterious blobs that lurk more than 2,500 kilometres underground may be remnants of a Mars-sized planet which slammed into Earth in the early solar system and produced a shower of debris that formed the Moon. According to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Changethe Moon was created about 4.5 billion years ago when an ancient protoplanet called Theia slammed into the fledging Earth. At the time, our planet was still an infant and only 85% of its size today.
Scientists at California California Institute of Technology and Shanghai Astronomical Observatory explained that this theoretical collision would have melted much of Earth and Theia, which reformed as a new bulkier Earth. Vast amounts of dust and rock, on the other, blasted into orbit where they came together to create the Moon.
Now, with this in mind, researchers turned their attention to two continental-sized blobs buried deep inside Earth’s mantle. In their study, they noted that the blobs, known as large-low velocity provinces (LLVP), were originally discovered by seismologists, but their origins have never been clear.
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Therefore, scientists used computer simulations of the giant impact and convection currents inside Earth to explore how the event might have unfolded. They believe that the collision would have melted the upper half of the Earth’s mantle, allowing a hefty chunk of Theia to penetrate further into the planet and gradually sink towards the core.
Over the next 4.5 billion years, the rock from the protoplanet could have moved around due to convection inside our planet and ultimately formed the blobs present today, researchers explained. The blobs are located near the boundary with Earth’s core, they added.
“To my knowledge, our work is the first one proposing this idea,” Dr Qian Yuan told The Guardian. “I look forward to seeing future missions on the moon to bring back its mantle rocks, which are very likely to come from the impactor Theia, according to the majority of moon-forming impact simulations,” he said. “If the lunar mantle rock and LLVP-related basalts share the same chemical signatures, they should both originate from Theia,” the professor added.
