Shanghai (ANTARA) – An international team of scientists from China and the United States (US) made an extraordinary discovery indicating that two large objects buried in Earth’s deep mantle may be remnants of the formation of the Moon about 4.5 billion years ago.
A leading theory states that the Moon formed when a Mars-sized planet nicknamed Theia crashed into Gaia or early Earth, and the impact threw Earth’s top layer into space, where the debris recombined and formed the Moon.
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, and the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found new evidence supporting this hypothesis in a study published Thursday (2/11) in the journal Nature.
They proposed that two continent-sized anomalies with low seismic velocities in the lowermost mantle, beneath the African continent and the Pacific Ocean respectively, may have originated from Theia mantle material (Theia mantle material/TMM), which is essentially 2 to 3.5 percent denser than proto-Earth mantle material.
Using large impact simulations, the team revealed that a small portion of Theia’s mantle may have been pushed into and deposited within proto-Earth’s solid lower mantle following the large impact event that formed the Moon.
They found that Theia’s remains, like the Moon’s rocks, are rich in iron, making them denser than the surrounding matter.
The dense blob tens of kilometers in size after the impact may have sunk and accumulated into a thermochemical pile above the Earth’s core, which then persists today and is a natural consequence of the large impact that formed the Moon, according to the study.
The results of this research also provide a new perspective for understanding the internal structure of the Earth, the long-term evolution of the Earth, and even the formation process of the inner solar system.
“The massive impact that formed the Moon appears to be the origin of early mantle heterogeneity and marks the starting point of Earth’s 4.5 billion year geological evolution,” said SHAO’s Deng Hongping, one of the authors on the study.
“Our study may provide clues about the existence of exoplanets outside our solar system,” added Deng.
2023-11-04 00:35:28
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