A team of scientists from Harvard University believe that have found evidence that an ancient Earth exists inside the Earth.
The team believe that a previously unexplained isotopic ratio from deep
within the Earth may be a signal from material from the time before the
Earth collided with another planet-sized body, leading to the creation
of the Moon. This may represent the echoes of the ancient Earth, which
existed prior to the proposed collision 4.5 billion years ago. This work
is being presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Sacramento,
California.
The currently favored theory says that the Moon was formed 4.5 billion
years ago, when the Earth collided with a Mars-sized mass, which has
been given the name "Theia". According to this theory, the heat
generated by the collision would have caused the whole planet to melt,
before some of the debris cooled and spun off to create the Moon.
Now however, a group of scientists from Harvard University believe that
they have identified a sign that only part of the Earth melted, and that
an ancient part still exists within the Earth's mantle.
According to lead researcher
Associate Professor Sujoy Mukhopadhyay
(Harvard): "The energy released by the impact between the Earth and
Theia would have been huge, certainly enough to melt the whole planet.
But we believe that the impact energy was not evenly distributed
throughout the ancient Earth. This means that a major part of the
impacted hemisphere would probably have been completely vaporized, but
the opposite hemisphere would have been partly shielded, and would not
have undergone complete melting".
The idea that a very disruptive collision of the Earth with another
planet-sized body, the biggest event in Earth's geological history, did
not completely melt and homogenize the Earth challenges some of our
notions on planet formation and the energetics of giant impacts. If the
theory is proven correct, then we may be seeing echoes of the ancient
Earth, from a time before the collision".
But not only an ancient world exists inside the earth.
Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of New Mexico provided the first ever evidence for potentially oceans worth of water deep beneath the United States.
Northwestern University geophysicist Steve Jacobsen and
University of New Mexico
seismologist Brandon Schmandt have found deep pockets of magma located
about 400 miles beneath North America, a likely signature of the
presence of a massive reservoir of water three times the size of Earth's
oceans.
Though not in the familiar liquid form — the ingredients for water are
bound up in rock deep in the Earth's mantle — the discovery may
represent the planet's largest water reservoir.
Schmandt and Jacobsen's findings build on a discovery in which
scientists found a piece of the mineral ringwoodite inside a diamond
brought up from a depth of 400 miles by a volcano in Brazil. That tiny
piece of ringwoodite — the only sample in existence from within the
Earth — contained a surprising amount of water bound in solid form in
the mineral.
Fragments of the blue colored mineral ringwoodlite synthesized in the
laboratory. (Credit: Steve Jacobsen - Northwestern University).
"The ringwoodite is like a sponge, soaking up water," Jacobsen said.
"There is something very special about the crystal structure of
ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water.
The presence of liquid water on the surface is what makes our "blue
planet" habitable, and scientists have long been trying to figure out
just how much water may be cycling between Earth's surface and interior
reservoirs through plate tectonics. The new findings will also help
scientists better understand Earth's water cycle.
Besides, they have found evidence of
a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.
According to the Hollow Earth Hypothesis, planet Earth is either wholly
hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space.
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