Discovered the secret passage leading to the world 1,600km underground

The study, published in the journal PNAS, says it's a cleft in the Earth, with an entrance 100km above the Earth's surface, through to a depth of 1,600km underground, allowing deep flow of material from the mantle of the Earth. the planet moves from below the Galápagos Islands to the area below Panama.

3D map of Panama's topography

According to Science Alert, it is a form of material movement that has never been detected before and is believed to be the reason for the few active volcanoes in Panama. Previous geological studies have shown that on the west coast of Central America, the Cocos tectonic plate is sinking and pushing oceanic crust under the continental layer of the North American tectonic plates, creating a sucking zone. sink, forming the Central American Volcanic Arc.

But the volcano stops in western Panama, according to geochemist and marine chemist David Bekaert from the Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution (Massachusetts, USA), a member of the research team.

The newly discovered geological tunnel acts as a window, a strange and unintentional gap in Earth. It was discovered by analyzing material in western Panama and behind the volcanic arc in Costarica, which is full of exotic mantle material, which contains the composition of the lower Galápagos mantle rather than the mantle region. government just below Panama.

The scientists built a model and found that beneath Panama, part of the buried Cocos tectonic plate was not swallowed up by the planet's mantle, but only warped, cracked, and eventually formed. creating a narrow opening, tunnel wall for deep material to pass through.

According to Live Science, this gap may originate from an existing fault of the Cocos Plate, or newly formed during the process of it being distorted when it goes underground.

However, what drives material from the mantle to pass through this cleft to reach the area below Panama remains a mystery. After moving a diagonal to below Panama, deep material continues to be brought to the surface through geological processes and discovered by humans.