Mammoth structures discovered beneath Africa could be 'ancient planet' 4,500,000,000 years old
Mammoth structures have been uncovered beneath Africa that could actually be an ‘ancient planet’ that is 4.5 billion years old.
The bizarre theory comes after two giant blobs were discovered under Africa and the Pacific Ocean.
They are so big that, according to a report by IFL Science, the one under Africa is a whopping 497 miles tall which is the equivalent of having 90 Mount Everests piled up on top of each other.
The blobs cover around 6% of the Earth’s entire volume but it’s still not clear what they are or where they come from.
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There are various different ideas that have been suggested to explain what these masses are, with one proposing that they could be piles of oceanic crust that have built up over billions of years.
However, this is a much more interesting and bizarre theory that suggests these could actually be pieces of an ancient planet that existed long before Earth and made impact with our planet 4.5 billion years ago.
Experts have been able to get a better look at the structures using a technique called seismic tomography.
This examines how waves of energy travel during an earthquake and, as rocks have different densities to liquid, the waves pass through them at varying speeds.
Through this, scientists are able to map out the interior makeup of our planet.
It’s thought that the collision of an older planet hitting Earth billions of years ago could have created the world as we know it today as well as forming the moon that now orbits around the planet.
This theory has become known as the Theia theory or the giant-impact hypothesis.
What evidence is there for the giant-impact hypothesis?
Analysis of lunar rocks that were brought back by the Apollo missions has revealed that there are unmistakable similarities in the isotopic composition of oxygen and other elements to Earth rocks, which suggests that they might have a shared origin.
This theory could also offer an explanation to the moon’s relatively high angular momentum and its tilted axis.
Computer simulations of the theorized impact event have backed up this idea that the collision could have been the result of the formation of the moon through the ejection of rock and debris from the impact.
This is a reminder that while we continue to set our sights on the stars, it turns out that there is still a lot we need to uncover about our own planet.