A New Ocean Appears on Earth in an Unbelievable Place

American scientists were shocked to discover an unknown, strange, ancient structure surrounding the Earth's iron core .

According to Science Alert, research led by geologist Samantha Hansen from the University of Alabama (USA) used seismic waves to "look" at the mysterious structure in our own planet and discovered a strange layer of structure located at the core-mantle boundary (CMB).

Mysterious structures deep underground may be the remains of an ancient ocean - (Photo: ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY).

Dr Hansen and colleagues used 15 monitoring stations buried under the Antarctic ice to map seismic waves over three years. They travel through the bowels of our planet, so differences in their path reveal hidden structures.

They found that in the CMB region, seismic waves traveled at extremely low speeds compared to elsewhere, revealing a structure surrounding the planet's core that is very large and includes mountains five times higher than Mount Everest.

It's impossible to look directly at these strange plates, but the team believes they are oceanic crust - the base of some ancient ocean that was buried very deep through a process called "subduction".

Subduction is a process within a larger phenomenon called plate tectonics. Our planet's crust is not continuous but consists of about 20 large and small plates, constantly moving and sliding over each other.

They are too numerous compared to the total surface area, so they constantly jostle and slide over each other, carrying continents and oceans that move many times to form supercontinents, superoceans, and then separate into many continents as today throughout billions of years of history.

When an ocean shrinks, subduction occurs somewhere in the middle, a process that can be thought of as a portion of the ocean floor being swallowed up by the Earth. Mysteriously, the tectonic plate—the piece of Earth's crust that carried the ancient ocean—has burrowed all the way down to this boundary, instead of wandering around the upper mantle like most other pieces.

The research results have just been published in the journal Science Advances , in which Dr Hansen said the new findings will provide important connections between the Earth's shallow and deep structures, as well as the overall processes that drove our planet's evolution.