Scientists ‘See' Puzzling Features Deep in Earth’s Interior

upstart writes:

Scientists 'see' puzzling features deep in Earth's interior:

New research led by the University of Cambridge is the first to obtain a detailed 'image' of an unusual pocket of rock at the boundary layer with Earth's core, some three thousand kilometres beneath the surface.

The enigmatic area of rock, which is located almost directly beneath the Hawaiian Islands, is one of several ultra-low velocity zones - so-called because earthquake waves slow to a crawl as they pass through them.

[...] Earth's interior is layered like an onion: at the centre sits the iron-nickel core, surrounded by a thick layer known as the mantle, and on top of that a thin outer shell - the crust we live on. Although the mantle is solid rock, it is hot enough to flow extremely slowly. These internal convection currents feed heat to the surface, driving the movement of tectonic plates and fuelling volcanic eruptions.

[...] The researchers used the latest numerical modelling methods to reveal kilometre-scale structures at the core-mantle boundary. According to co-author Dr Kuangdai Leng, who developed the methods while at the University of Oxford, "We are really pushing the limits of modern high-performance computing for elastodynamic simulations, taking advantage of wave symmetries unnoticed or unused before."

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