Scientists have discovered an explanation for the 'gravitational hole’ in the Indian Ocean.
A gravity hole is an area where gravity is low, causing the ocean floor to sink.
Beneath the sea, there is something three million square kilometers in size, which has previously baffled scientists.
Now two researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Debanjan Pal and Atreyi Ghosh, think they have solved the mystery.
More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) beneath the Earth’s crust, they plunged into a 'slab tomb’ under Africa about 30 million years ago, stirring up hot molten rock and finding the cold, dense remains of an ancient ocean.
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Ball and Ghosh retrace the formation of the massive geoid by modeling how tectonic plates have slid over the Earth’s mantle over the past 140 million years.
They ran simulations and compared the shape of the ocean lows predicted by those models to observations of the crater.
Models that reproduced the Indian Ocean’s geoid in its present-day form to a lesser extent all had one thing in common: plumes of hot, low-density magma swirling beneath the depression. These plumes, as well as a unique mantle structure, formed the geoid low; If they get high enough, Paul and Ghosh reckon.
„In summary, our results suggest that compl [shape and amplitude of the] The geoid was observed to be low enough that the plumes must be sufficiently buoyant to reach mid-zone depth,” the pair wrote.
The first of these plumes appeared about 20 million years ago, when the geoid subsided south of the Indian Ocean, and about 10 million years later the old Tethys Ocean sank into the lower crust. As the plumes spread beneath the lithosphere and moved towards the Indian subcontinent, the depression strengthened.
But not all scientists are convinced that more research needs to be done to find out what’s really going on.
Science is crazy.
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„Oddany rozwiązywacz problemów. Przyjazny hipsterom praktykant bekonu. Miłośnik kawy. Nieuleczalny introwertyk. Student.