Scientists have found an explanation for the “gravitational hole” in the Indian Ocean.
A gravitational hole is an area where the gravitational pull is low, causing the sea floor to sink.
Deep in the ocean lies one that covers three million square kilometers and previously baffled scientists.
Now, two researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Debanjan Pal and Attreyee Ghosh, think they have solved the mystery.
More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) below Earth’s crust, they found the cold, dense remnants of an ancient ocean that fell into a ‘slab cemetery’ under Africa some 30 million years ago, stirring up hot molten rock.
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Pal and Josh track the formation of the massive geode by modeling how tectonic plates have moved up the Earth’s mantle over the past 140 million years.
They ran simulations and compared the shape of the low-lying ocean predicted by those models with observations of the dent itself.
The models that have reproduced the Indian Ocean low-lying geodes in their current form all have one thing in common: plumes of hot, low-density magma shoot up beneath the bottom. These plumes, combined with the characteristic mantle structure, are what created the depression of the geoid; If they rise high enough, Pal and Ghosh count.
In short, our results indicate that it is compatible with [shape and amplitude of the] The couple noted that the geodes are low, and the plumes should be buoyant enough to reach the mid-mantle depths.”
The first of these plumes appeared about 20 million years ago, to the south of the Indian Ocean low geode, and about 10 million years after the ancient Tethys Sea sank into the lower mantle. As plumes spread beneath the lithosphere and moved slowly toward the Indian Peninsula, the depression intensified.
But more research needs to be done to find out what’s really going on as not all scientists are convinced.
Science is madness.
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