Mysterious structures buried far below Pacific Ocean discovered by scientists

Scientists have discovered something rather peculiar when using earthquakes to study how the lower portion of Planet Earth's mantle under the Pacific Ocean is composed.

Some structures seem to be colder or have a different composition than surrounding molten rocks as there are zones where seismic waves move in different ways, reports IFLScience.

The team have said it's a major mystery and are also uncertain what these deep structures are made up of - or what this means for the planet's internal structure.

In a statement, Thomas Schouten, first author and doctoral student at the Geological Institute of ETH Zurich, said: "That's our dilemma.

"With the new high-resolution model, we can see such anomalies everywhere in the Earth's mantle. But we don't know exactly what they are or what material is creating the patterns we have uncovered."

It seems so many different cold regions suggests they were formed at different times from different sources.

The blue sections show were previously unknown colder materials in the mantle are located / Sebastian Noe/ETH Zurich

Schouten said: "We think that the anomalies in the lower mantle have a variety of origins.

"It could be either ancient, silica-rich material that has been there since the formation of the mantle about four billion years ago and has survived despite the convective movements in the mantle, or zones where iron-rich rocks accumulate as a consequence of these mantle movements over billions of years.

"We have to calculate the different material parameters that could generate the observed speeds of the different wave types. Essentially, we have to dive deeper into the material properties behind the wave speed."

These findings were published in a paper in the Scientific Reports journal.

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