The most accurate map of the Earth

Scientists have listened to earthquakes to create the most accurate map of our planet.

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Map inside the Earth

By recording seismic waves, researchers were able to build a 3D image of the mantle - the layer between the Earth's outer shell and core . They do this by analyzing the speed of the vibrations, which move very quickly through solid and slow rock through molten magma.

In the published images, slower waves are red and orange, while faster vibrations are blue and green.

In addition to the 3D images above, their author - Professor Jeroen Tromp of Princeton University (USA) is trying to draw a map of the whole mantle, to a depth of 3,000 meters, later this year. To accomplish this goal, Mr. Tromp and his colleagues used Titan supercomputers, which could perform 20 million billion calculations per second at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA.

Until now, Professor Tromp has looked at seismic waves from 3,000 earthquakes of at least 5.5 magnitude magnitude, provided by thousands of seismic recording stations around the world.His map is expected to reveal the exact location of tectonic plates capable of causing earthquakes when moving in the opposite direction, as well as the position of magma if it is sprayed on the surface, causing activity. volcano.

Previous research on this problem used only three types of seismic waves: primary waves or compressive waves, secondary waves or sliding waves and surface waves. Meanwhile, Tromp's technique uses both waves moving from the earthquake center to the detector as well as waves from the detector to the earthquake, called the conjugate wave.