The remnants of an ancient planet that collided with Earth to form the Moon lie deep within the earth, according to a new model.
In the 1980s, geophysicists made a startling discovery: two continent-sized blobs of unusual material were found deep near the center of the Earth, one beneath the African continent and one beneath the Pacific Ocean. Each blob is twice the size of the Moon and likely composed of different proportions of elements than the mantle surrounding it.
Scientists first discovered the LLVPs by measuring seismic waves traveling through the earth. Seismic waves travel at different speeds through different materials, and in the 1980s, the first hints emerged of large-scale three-dimensional variations deep within the structure of Earth. In the deepest mantle, the seismic wave pattern is dominated by the signatures of two large structures near the Earth's core that researchers believe possess an unusually high level of iron.
Given such a violent impact, why did Theia's material clump into the two distinct blobs instead of mixing together with the rest of the forming planet? The researchers' simulations showed that much of the energy delivered by Theia's impact remained in the upper half of the mantle, leaving Earth's lower mantle cooler than estimated by earlier, lower-resolution impact models.
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