What Are These Enormous Blobs 1,800 Miles Beneath Our Feet?

June 19, 2020 9:27 AM

What Are These Enormous Blobs 1,800 Miles Beneath Our Feet? (Popular Mechanics): Roughly 1,800 miles below Earth's surface, at the boundary between our planet's mantle and molten iron outer core, lurk strange, giant structures. So what are they? Scientists detect unexpected widespread structures near Earth's core (Phys Org): Scientists are unsure of the composition of these structures (image), and previous studies have provided only a limited view of them. [...] The new research provides the first comprehensive view (image) of the core-mantle boundary over a wide area with such detailed resolution.

Scientists Have Discovered Vast Unidentified Structures Deep Inside the Earth (Motherboard):

Scientists led by Doyeon Kim, a seismologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, fed seismograms captured from hundreds of earthquakes that occurred between 1990 to 2018 into an algorithm called Sequencer. While seismological studies tend to focus on relatively small datasets of regional earthquake activity, Sequencer allowed Kim and his colleagues to analyze 7,000 measurements of earthquakes—each with a magnitude of at least 6.5—that shook the subterranean world under the Pacific Ocean within the past three decades.[...]

Mega-ULVZs are intriguing structures not only due to their size, but because they may be composed of exotic materials that date back to a time before Earth had a Moon. These huge anomalous chunks could be partially melted material that predate the Moon formation event, which scientists think was a gigantic collision between early Earth and a Mars-sized object more than four billion years ago.

Sequencing seismograms: A panoptic view of scattering in the core-mantle boundary region (Science, abstract)

posted by not_the_water (26 comments total)

Cities of the Elder Things?
The Forgotten Colony Ships?
More Goddamn Plastic Buildup?
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:29 AM on June 19, 2020 [13 favorites]

These structures have already been identified.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:33 AM on June 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

A relative?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:37 AM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

So THAT’s where Atlantis went!
posted by rikschell at 9:40 AM on June 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

Do you want Chthonians? Because that’s how you get Chthonians.
posted by notoriety public at 9:45 AM on June 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

Guys that was me. Cheese stuffed pizza crust. I am trying to eat more fibre now.
posted by srboisvert at 9:45 AM on June 19, 2020 [5 favorites]

Oh good. Something for July. 2020 truly keeps on giving
posted by potrzebie at 9:50 AM on June 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

strange, giant structures

something something artemis fowl
posted by queen anne's remorse at 10:01 AM on June 19, 2020

Magma whales
posted by Going To Maine at 10:14 AM on June 19, 2020 [10 favorites]

As long as they’re not looking back at us we can let this one go until mid 2021 or so?
posted by mhoye at 10:24 AM on June 19, 2020 [8 favorites]

Outstanding potential username up for grabs: hot dense structures.
posted by merriment at 10:34 AM on June 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

Quick, someone call Doug McClure
posted by mrzarquon at 10:43 AM on June 19, 2020

It's the DC-8-like spaceships of the Galactic Confederacy!
posted by Cardinal Fang at 10:50 AM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's the DC-8-like spaceships of the Galactic Confederacy!
Their monuments have been torn down so far they're subterranian, cool
posted by StarkRoads at 1:02 PM on June 19, 2020

That's fascinating – I'd heard of earthquake signals being used to probe for density changes before, but having that full 3D sense of the things makes them more impressive.
posted by lucidium at 1:05 PM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

cmd-F... c y c l o p e a n...

nothing huh

e l d r i t c h... nope

s q u a m o u s... wow

apparently we truly know nothing about them
posted by GuyZero at 1:38 PM on June 19, 2020 [6 favorites]

a n t e d i l... NOTHING?
posted by GuyZero at 1:39 PM on June 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

hope we're not in for a Fifth Season!
posted by supermedusa at 2:05 PM on June 19, 2020 [8 favorites]

Just a guess: Mothra eggs.
posted by sammyo at 4:04 PM on June 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

Oil!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 5:23 PM on June 19, 2020

Sheeple. Mole children camps and breeding grounds. Do the research.

SHIT. Edit: I legit thought the sarcasm tags would display. It IS sarcasm.
posted by Snowishberlin at 6:11 PM on June 19, 2020

Is this where the very heavy metals end up as they percolate downward?
posted by Oyéah at 7:03 PM on June 19, 2020

Fun fact: In Minecraft, the "spawn chunk" is the section of the generated world that was created first when the player starts the new world. Unlike other chunks, which are loaded and unloaded to preserve memory as the player travels, the spawn chunk is constantly loaded as long as the server is running.

This means that if there's a mob spawner in the spawn chunk, it's gonna keep generating new mobs until the entity limit is reached...

Bottom line: please enchant all your armor before going to investigate.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:30 PM on June 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was guessing stoneaters. Actually still guessing stoneaters. Wake me up when the obelisks start to drift.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:12 AM on June 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Obligatory xkcd.
posted by rochrobbb at 12:46 PM on June 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Why are they referred to as "structures", isn't it just big hot rocks?
posted by chaz at 2:09 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]