Scientists discover something unexpected moving 2,700km under Earth's surface

Scientists have found proof that the insides of the Earth are highly active. The discovery was made at a depth of 2,700km, where the team from ETH Zurich said that solid rock is in constant motion. Flowing rock might sound like a strange term, but the researchers say that's the consistency of the rock.

"Our discovery shows that the Earth is not only active on the surface, but is also in motion deep inside," said lead author Professor Motohiko Murakami.

"We have finally found the last piece of the puzzle."

It is neither liquid nor hard and brittle like the regular rocks found on the surface. Instead, it is like boiling water in a pot and moves on convection currents. The next step is to map the hidden currents of solid rock deep inside the Earth.

Further studies into the flowing rock could also pinpoint the energy that powers volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonic plates, and the Earth's magnetic field.

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Scientists studied a part of the Earth's mantle known as the D' layer. It is seen as a strange region since seismic waves from earthquakes hit high speeds every time they hit this layer. They think it is because of the presence of a different type of material here. Murakami had earlier discovered that perovskite, the material which makes up most of the lower mantle, transforms into a new mineral around the D' layer when there is extreme heat and pressure, called post-perovskite.

He pointed out that this is why seismic waves started behaving strangely when they hit this portion.

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However, they argued that this phenomenon alone could not explain the change in speed of seismic waves. Professor Murakami knew that when seismic waves travelled through harder material, they sped up.

So he created the conditions in Earth's mantle in a laboratory. As part of the experiment, he crushed tiny grains of perovskite at pressures up to 115 gigapascals, over 16 million pounds per square inch. This helped him replicate the conditions of the D' layer. He found that the crystals in the post-perovskite lined up in the same direction.

He tested this area and found that only this specific alignment could cause the seismic waves to travel faster. They argued that something was happening around the D' layer that forced the crystals to face the same direction. This led them to conclude that solid rock was flowing horizontally along the boundary between the Earth's mantle and the core.