{"id":194822,"date":"2025-11-22T19:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T19:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/194822\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T19:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T19:20:16","slug":"scientists-say-huge-structures-inside-earth-are-related-to-the-origin-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/194822\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Say Huge Structures Inside Earth Are Related to the Origin of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two enormous structures that sit at the border between the Earth\u2019s mantle and its core have puzzled scientists for decades, defying reigning theories of how our planet came to be.<\/p>\n

In a new study<\/a> published in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of researchers led by Rutgers University geodynamicist Yoshinori Miyazaki has come up with a new explanation for these structures \u2014 suggesting, provocatively, that their formation may be closely tied to the evolution of life on Earth.<\/p>\n

The continent-sized lumps of dense, hot rock<\/a> lie almost 1,800 miles beneath the surface under Africa and the Pacific Ocean. They show up in seismic wave readings, indicating major differences in the surrounding composition of rock.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are not random oddities,\u201d said Miyazaki in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThey are fingerprints of Earth\u2019s earliest history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can understand why they exist, we can understand how our planet formed and why it became habitable,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Current theories suggest the early Earth formed a mantle billions of years ago from a massive magma ocean, separating more concentrated from less concentrated material over time, not unlike \u201cfrozen juice separating into sugary concentrate and watery ice,\u201d per the statement.<\/p>\n

But finding evidence to support this theory has proven more difficult than expected. Instead of even layers, we\u2019ve discovered large irregular lumps of \u201clarge-low shear velocity provinces<\/a>,\u201d structures characteristic of the Earth\u2019s lowermost mantle, and \u201cultra-low velocity zones,\u201d or patches that slow seismic waves down to extremely low velocities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat contradiction was the starting point,\u201d Miyazaki explained. \u201cIf we start from the magma ocean and do the calculations, we don\u2019t get what we see in Earth\u2019s mantle today. Something was missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miyazaki and his colleagues modeled the conditions present billions of years ago, finding that a slow trickle of silicon and magnesium leaking from the Earth\u2019s core may have \u201ccontaminated\u201d a \u201cbasal magma ocean,\u201d stopping it from solidifying in parts and resulting in a strangely lumpy composition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we proposed was that it might be coming from material leaking out from the core,\u201d Miyazaki said. \u201cIf you add the core component, it could explain what we see right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

This process also could\u2019ve allowed the Earth to cool sufficiently, leading to volcanic activity and eventually influencing how the planet\u2019s atmosphere formed. It could also indicate why other planets, including Venus and Mars, became inhospitable hellscapes incapable of supporting life as we know it while Earth thrived.<\/p>\n

\u201cEarth has water, life and a relatively stable atmosphere,\u201d Miyazaki explained. \u201cVenus\u2019 atmosphere is 100 times thicker than Earth\u2019s and is mostly carbon dioxide, and Mars has a very thin atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t fully understand why that is,\u201d he added. \u201cBut what happens inside a planet, that is, how it cools, how its layers evolve, could be a big part of the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, it\u2019s only the beginning of a theory that could give us a \u201clittle more certainty about how Earth evolved, and why it\u2019s so special,\u201d the researcher concluded, despite only having \u201cvery few clues.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on the mantle:<\/strong> Scientists Say They Detected Something Huge Shifting Inside the Earth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two enormous structures that sit at the border between the Earth\u2019s mantle and its core have puzzled scientists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[107815,18,19,17,69667,133,107812],"class_list":{"0":"post-194822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-earths-mantle","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-magma-ocean","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-yoshinori-miyazaki"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115594973892466073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}