Two strange, high-density blobs buried more than a kilometre underground may have come from the ancient world Theia, which is thought to have slammed into Earth to create the moon
There may be chunks of an ancient planet trapped in Earth’s mantle. The prevailing theory of the moon’s formation is called the, in which a Mars-sized object called Theia slammed into Earth and was blown to bits, creating the moon from the debris. Theia may not be all gone, though – there may be two lumps of its material embedded deep underground.
For decades, researchers have known that there are two areas in Earth’s mantle, each tens of kilometres across, that behave slightly differently from the surrounding rock. One is beneath Africa, and the other under the Pacific Ocean.
convection within Earth’s mantle would have slowly gathered this dense material into the two piles we see today. We cannot confirm this by digging down to the blobs, but there may be other ways to tell whether they really are pieces of Theia. “It’s way, way, way deeper than anyone has ever been able to dig,” says Yuan. “But we do see mantle plumes rising from these two blobs, which can bring some of the chemical signals to the surface.
“This moon-forming giant impact is maybe one of the most important factors for why Earth is so different from any other rocky planet we’ve found,” says Yuan. “This impact changed the atmosphere, changed the crust, changed the mantle, changed the core, all in 24 hours, so it was really probably the most important event in Earth’s history.” If we want to look for other
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4.5 billion years ago, another planet crashed into Earth. We may have found its leftovers.A Mars-size object called Theia smashed into Earth, and the debris coalesced into the moon. Now scientists believe they may have identified pieces of Theia at the bottom of Earth’s mantle.
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