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| The mysterious mountain ranges at the bottom of the earth, the secret of which no one could know |
It was a summer day in Antarctica. In front of Samantha Hanson was a white wall of snow and the ground was meeting the sky. He had ice on his eyebrows, and even in summer the temperature was minus 62 degrees Celsius.
In such circumstances, he chose a suitable spot in the snow and took out his shovel.
Hansen was in a remote location in Antarctica that is inaccessible to native wildlife. She was part of a team from the University of Alabama and Arizona State University searching for hidden mountain ranges.
So far no expedition has been able to gain access to these mountain ranges. Neither do they get sunlight because these mountain ranges are underground?
It was the year 2015 and a team of researchers arrived here to set up a seismology station. Their aim was to examine the interior of planet Earth. In total, they established 15 such stations throughout Antarctica.
The mountain ranges discovered in this team's research are extremely mysterious. But to their surprise, Hernsen's team also discovered that these sequences, called 'ultra-low velocity zones', are ubiquitous.
Chances are, no matter where you are in the world, some such chain exists deep beneath your feet.
"We found evidence of them everywhere," Hanson says. But the question is, what are they and what are they doing on our planet?
A mysterious history
Earth's strange interior hills are at a turning point. They are in between the metallic core and the rocky part. It's a mystery to experts around the world, including Hanson's team, but they believe it's important to the planet's geology.
It should be noted that the Earth's core-mantle boundary is found thousands of kilometers away from the surface, but there is a surprising connection between these depths and our Earth.
The site is believed to be a sort of graveyard of seafloor artifacts and may also be related to the unexpected volcanic mountains found in places like Hawaii that form a superheated highway to the Earth's crust.
The story of these mountains began in 1996 when scientists began investigating the Earth's core-mantle boundary in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They investigated underground events that produce waves, such as earthquakes.
Such waves travel through the Earth and can be heard by scientific stations. By examining the paths of these waves, scientists created an X-ray-like image of the interior of planet Earth.
After analyzing the waves generated by more than 25 earthquakes, scientists learned that they slow down once they go underground. The subterranean mountain ranges at this point were not uniform, with some peaks extending up to 40 km into the mantle, four and a half times the height of Mount Everest, while others were only three km high.
Since then many such mountains have been found under the Earth's crust around the world. Some of them are very large. A similar chain beneath Hawaii covers an area of 910 km.
But till today no one knows what these mountains are made of or how they got to this point.
One hypothesis is that these mountains are part of the Earth's lower mantle, which has been superheated by the Earth's inner layer. It should be noted that the temperature of the Earth's mantle reaches 3700 degrees, but this is nothing compared to the temperature of the core, which can reach 5500 degrees. This temperature is not much lower than the surface temperature of the Sun.
It is believed that the hottest parts of the core-mantle boundary will melt to some extent and these 'ultra-low velocity zones' are seen.
An alternative to this hypothesis is that these mountains deep in the Earth are probably different from the surrounding mantle.
It should be noted that these mountains are found near other mysterious places, including a place called 'Tozo' under Africa, and a place known as 'Jason' under the Pacific Ocean. They are said to be billions of years old. But no one knows anything about them either. But the proximity of these two is the basis of the concept that there must be a connection between them.
One hypothesis about this relationship is that it all started when the Earth's tectonic plates began to slide into the Earth's mantle and sink at the boundary between the Earth's core and mantle. Then gradually they spread, resulting in the birth of mountain ranges.
If this hypothesis is correct, then it can be believed that these mysterious mountains are made of ancient oceanic crust, which consists of rocks and other marine material, i.e. these mountains were formed by heat and pressure.
But their presence in Antarctica may disprove this notion.
A difficult campaign
During an expedition to install a seismology station in Antarctica, Hanson and his team used helicopters and small planes to select suitable locations and install instruments in the deep snow.
Within a few days, they got the first results. With these devices, his team could detect earthquakes anywhere on Earth. "We can see if there's a big earthquake," Hansen says, "and he's had a lot of that."
Every day, the US National Earthquake Information Center records 55 earthquakes around the world.
Subterranean mountain ranges had been identified before Hansen and his team, but no one had traced their presence beneath Antarctica. SurprisinglyHis team detected his presence everywhere.
Earlier it was believed that these mountains were spread only in places called 'blobs'. But Hanson's findings suggest that these mountains may be spreading like a blanket over the Earth's surface.
But this is a theory that requires thorough investigation to prove. Before this research, only 20% of the core-mantle boundary had been observed.
"We hope we can fill that void," Hanson says.
However, if these mountains are really that wide, new questions will arise. But whatever the discovery, there's a chance that the strange region of Antarctica may hold the answer to the mystery of how hot the subterranean mountain range is.