At over 29,000 feet, Mount Everest is popularly known as the highest mountain on Earth. What many may not know, however, is that there are mountain ranges inside the land that has peaks up to four times higher than Everest. in a bbc report, the British public broadcaster details the years-long efforts of teams of researchers studying the planet’s interior to learn more about the mountainous structures below the surface. The mountains, located between the planet’s molten core and its mantle, were discovered by researchers in 1996 who were investigating how seismic waves from large events passed through the core-mantle boundary.
The BBC says that by studying 25 earthquakes, researchers noticed that seismic waves slowed down at certain “irregular” points on that boundary. It turns out that these points are deeply buried mountain ranges, with some of the peaks at elevations ranging from 1.7 to 24 miles. So seismologists know the spikes are there, but they are otherwise mysterious in many ways. As the BBC puts it, “nobody knows how they got there or what they’re made of.” They can be found in a number of places on Earth, with one particularly huge specimen located below the Hawaiian Islands.
There are multiple theories about the origins of the spikes, and one of the most likely is that they are due to overheating of the planet’s core in the rocky mantle above. at a university in alabama Press release Commenting on the study of the deep ridge, geophysicist Samantha Hansen said, “Seismic investigations, like ours, provide the highest-resolution images of our planet’s interior structure, and we are discovering that this structure is much more complicated than previously thought.” what was thought”.
However, the mysteries do not end with the huge mountains that surround the core. As nbc reported in 2019, scientists are also curious about the huge “mantle blankets” found floating just above the center of the planet. About the size of Australia, these droplets can produce plumes of molten material, the kind of plumes that cause massive supervolcanoes like the one below to erupt. yellow stone. (Read complete bbc story.)