A HUGE seismic tremor in Bolivia enabled researchers to make a startling revelation – that there is an astounding mountain range buried 400 miles BENEATH the surface.
In 1994, a massive 8.2 magnitude quake struck Bolivia, sending shockwaves through the planet’s inside. Those shockwaves have since permitted researchers an exceptional see what’s going on far below the surface and to make the revelation of a mountain range which could be greater than Everest. The waves reflect and change shape as they go through various items, and that is the means by which researchers could confirm that they were there.
The mountains push up into layers of rock above, which are significantly less thick and not as strong than the hilly territories underneath.
Lead creator Wenbo Wu, a geoscientist at the California Institute of Technology, stated: “We know that almost all objects have surface roughness and therefore scatter light. That’s why we can see these objects – the scattering waves carry the information about the surface’s roughness.
“In this study, we investigated scattered seismic waves travelling inside the Earth to constrain the roughness of the Earth’s 660 kilometre boundary.”
Seismologist Christine Houser, an assistant professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who was not engaged with this examination, included: “They find that Earth’s deep layers are just as complicated as what we observe at the surface.
“To find two mile (1-3 km) elevation changes on a boundary that is over 400 miles (660 km) deep using waves that travel through the entire Earth and back is an inspiring feat.
“Their findings suggest that as earthquakes occur and seismic instruments become more sophisticated and expand into new areas, we will continue to detect new small-scale signals which reveal new properties of Earth’s layers.”
The discoveries permit the specialists have a clearer knowledge into Earth’s tectonic plates and its mantles, just as painting a clearer picture of what the future holds.
Princeton geophysicist Jessica Irving, who co-composed the examination distributed in the journal Science, stated: “It’s easy to assume, given we can only detect seismic waves traveling through the Earth in its current state, that seismologists can’t help understand how Earth’s interior has changed over the past 4.5 billion years.
“What’s exciting about these results is that they give us new information to understand the fate of ancient tectonic plates which have descended into the mantle, and where ancient mantle material might still reside.
“Seismology is most exciting when it lets us better understand our planet’s interior in both space and time.”
