A multidisciplinary team of scientists has discovered two “anomalous” regions inside the Earth which they attribute to remains from the collision that formed the Moon about 4.5 billion years ago. The discovery, which was published this Wednesday by the magazine Natureis based on computer simulations carried out by a multidisciplinary team of scientists affiliated with research centers in the United States, China and the United Kingdom.
Their hypothesis implies that a protoplanet – a kind of “embryo” planet – known as Theia collided with the “proto-Earth” (Gaia) about 4.5 billion years ago, which would have led to the formation of different regions in the earth’s mantle.
From the remains of this gigantic collision the Luna, while Theia’s remains would have been buried deep in the Earth’s mantle; Although the researchers warn that still there is no direct evidence of the existence of Theia.
Scientists came to this conclusion while searching for an explanation for the fact that two large regions of the Earth’s mantle have an unusually slow seismic velocity about 2,900 kilometers deep, and its material is between 2 and 3.5% denser than that of the surrounding Earth’s mantle.
These two anomalous regions with respect to the heterogeneity of the rest of the Earth’s mantle extend for thousands of kilometers at its base, one of them under the African tectonic plate and the other under the Pacific tectonic plate.