While scanning at a depth of 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) below the Earth’s surface, geologists found two huge continent-sized masses embedded in the planet’s mantle (a solid area of silicone rock sandwiched between the Earth’s crust and the molten inner core) in the 1980s. For nearly four decades, scientists have puzzled over the nature and origin of these masses, but a new study suggests these peculiar anomalies are actually the remnants of a long-destroyed planet known as Theia, which is alleged to have smashed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago with so much force that the Moon was created from the resulting debris field.
In an article just published in Nature, a team of planetary scientists from Arizona State University and the California Institute of Technology hypothesize that the two huge masses or blobs buried deep in the Earth’s mantle are chunks of what was once the mantle of Theia. These were left behind when this wandering Mars-sized object collided with the Earth while our home planet was still in the process of forming.
While much of the doomed planet was liquefied during this collision, pieces from its interior could have survived the impact. Propelled forward by extreme momentum, these masses could have been driven into the ground with enough force to penetrate deep below the Earth’s surface. This would explain the presence of the two continent-sized anomalies, which were found via seismic imaging below the floor of the Pacific Ocean in one case and beneath the…
