Elon musk's Starling captured two extraterrestrial blobs reside in a peculiar region of our solar
system these strange creatures are believed to spend their days waiting patiently for their
food to fall upon them simply absorbing it with spreading amorphous bodies the
size of continents even more strange than their nutrition however is their natural environment
it might be referred to as Rocky because there are unusual minerals around in various Hues and
forms a shimmering sea in the distance that is so big that it holds as much water as all
of Earth's oceans combined is the only other noticeable feature otherwise the landscape is
rather desolate what exactly are these let's find out hello everyone welcome back to Elon
Musk Evolution where we bring you the most recent news about Elon Musk and his multi-billion dollar
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every day is the same with the weather being a pleasant 1827 degrees Celsius with certain
places of high pressure which is around 1.3 million times more than at the Earth's surface
even the most common materials begin to react in odd ways in this crushing environment for example
rock becomes pliable like plastic and oxygen behaves like a metal atoms get distorted in
this environment the blobs aren't strictly natural but this scorching Utopia isn't an
extraterrestrial World either in reality it is the Earth itself just incredibly deep beneath
the location and concern specifically is the lower mantle the layer of rock that lies just above
the core of the Earth this largely solid mass is Another Universe it is swirling and flecked with
a kaleidoscope of crystals ranging from diamonds there are about a quadrillion tons of them in the
mantle overall to minerals that are so elusive that they don't exist on the surface bridgemanite
and Dave mayite the two most prevalent rocks in this stratum are in fact largely unknown
to scientists they are the geological counterpart of the bizarre deep sea fish that melt when they
are trawed up from the ocean floor because they require the extremely high pressures that are
specific to the planet's interior to develop and they disintegrate if they are brought into
our world only when these elusive minerals become caught inside diamonds that have been brought to
the surface can they be observed in their original state even then it is impossible to anticipate
what these crystals might truly look like in the Earth's interior because the pressures they
typically experience have a significant impact on their physical characteristics there isn't a drop
of liquid in the far-off ocean in the meantime as an alternative it is Created from water that
has been trapped inside the mineral Olivine which makes up more than 50 percent of the upper mantle
it changes into crystals of ringwoodite an indigo blue mineral at lower depths according to veteran
leki and a associate professor of geology at the University of Maryland in the U.S the chemistry
changes completely at these levels he claims that certain minerals might become clearer for all
we know but the blobs in the deep Earth are what have geologists all over the world intrigued right
now they cover six percent of the planet's surface area and have a width of thousands
of kilometers one of them popularly referred to as tuzo is said to be up to 800 kilometers high
which is roughly equivalent to stacking 90 mount everests on top of one another estimates of their
heights vary but one is sought to be located under Africa the second Jason which is located
below the Pacific may rise 1800 kilometers in elevation or around 203 everests their
distorted shapes are molded around the Earth's core like two amoebas adhering to a moat of dust
Bernhard Steinberger a geodynamics researcher at the Norwegian University of Oslo and the gfz
German Research Center of geosciences claims that these features are quite large very noticeable in
tomography a type of Imaging virtually everything about these giant shapes including how they
formed what they are made of and how they might be affecting our planet is still unknown despite the
fact that they are almost likely there critically deciphering the blobs might provide light on some
of geology's longest standing puzzles including how the Earth formed what became of the ghost
Planet Thea and why volcanoes appear to be present in some parts of the world for no apparent reason
they might even provide insight into the likely changes the Earth will experience over the next
Millennia aiming to dig as deeply as possible into the Earth's crust the Soviet Union began what is
likely one of the most ambitious exploration programs in human history in 1970. the only
part of the planet that has ever been visible to human sight is this solid layer of rock that lies
above the mostly solid mantle and eventually the Earth's partially molten core nobody could
predict what would occur if they attempted to pass through it by August 1994 the cola super
deep borehole located in northeastern Russia among a desolate tract of Arctic tundra had descended to
astounding depths some 12 260 meters below ground the drill then became stagnant though the team in
charge of the experiment began by predicting what they thought they would discover especially that
the Earth would get one degree warmer for every 100 meters traveled towards its Center but quickly
became apparent that this was not the case by the time they traveled 10 kilometers in the middle
of the 1980s the temperature had already hit 180 degrees Celsius almost double what was anticipated
because the granite was behaving more like plastic than Rock under these intense
circumstances drilling it eventually became impossible a halt was put to the experiment
and to this day no one has succeeded in crossing the crust's boundary a rusted metal cover that
is buried in the ground is the only trace of the cola borehole that is still visible
as a result of the fact that everything we know is extremely indirect Steinberger claims that we
actually know considerably less about the Earth's mantle than we do about areas of space where we
can use telescopes so how can you do research in an environment that you were unable to see
or enter and in which even the most commonplace elements chemical characteristics are drastically
altered there is in fact a different approach in the field of seismology energy waves that
are formed when the ground suddenly moves during catastrophic events like earthquakes are studied
these include The Superficial surface waves and the body waves that move through the Earth's
innards scientists employ equipment on the other side of the planet from the earthquakes they are
monitoring to pick them up and then they look at anything that has managed to squeeze through they
can begin to put together what might be happening hundreds of kilometers beneath the surface by
analyzing the many wave patterns that arise due to these characteristics the Danish geophysicist
ingleman was able to make a significant Discovery in 1936 a significant earthquake in New Zealand
seven years prior produced an unexpected seismic result a certain sort of body wave which can pass
through any material had passed through the Earth albeit after being bent by a barrier on the way
another type known to be incapable of moving through liquids has not been successful in passing
this disproved that conventional wisdom that the core is fully solid and gave rise to the present
hypothesis that the core is composed of a solid interior encased in a liquid exterior layer or to
put it another way a reverse coconut it took some time for the technique to be improved but once it
was it was feasible to see the Earth's interior in three dimensions in addition to being able to
see beneath its surface in reality individuals in his profession performed tomography of the innards
of the earth as lucky says using the same kinds of methods as in computer-assisted tomography or
CAT scans a type of Medical Imaging employing x-ray images the Earth's blobs were found as a
result almost instantaneously geologists discover two enormous zones inside the mantle that are
below the Pacific Ocean and across Africa where earthquake waves hit resistance and slow down
previously the mantle was believed to be a uniform layer these regions stand out from the rest of the
mantle in a similar way to the Earth's core in fact they are among the planet's greatest
features these are the LL svps or large low Shear velocity provinces they have a strange shape that
is difficult to compare to anything else leki himself wouldn't describe them as mountains or
Mounds although they may be described as unusually bulbous he says they're larger
than continents intriguingly the formations appear to be more like enormous sand dunes one research
discovered that they occasionally featured steep slopes shallow ones and even a few overhangs the
characteristics have acquired the moniker blobs due to the controversy surrounding their emergence
but the mystery surrounding how the LL svps produced or even what they are constructed
of outweighs the mystery surrounding their bewildering look therefore lekki asserts that
there is no question that these two places are on average slower than the surrounding region in
terms of the speed at which earthquake waves pass through them the issue is that we can't
see clearly in that area similar to how climate change is an observation rather than a hypothesis
scientists haven't figured out exactly what they're looking at despite the fact that they
are aware that something is happening there another long-standing mystery offers a clue
if the LL svps are formed of the same material as the rest of the Earth's mantle they are defying a
fundamental principle of physics that's because the blobs appear to be both denser and hotter
than the nearby rock at the same time materials have a tendency to expand when heated up making
them less dense much like a stubborn jar lid that has been run under a hot tap to release it this is
difficult to understand if the blobs are made of simple silicates which make up the majority of the
mantle and are the main material found in Granite and sandstone in light of this it is assumed that
the blobs must differ chemically from the nearby Rock possibly they are made of minerals that are
especially rich in heavy elements like iron or nickel however there are various theories as to
how this occurs according to Steinberger it then becomes intriguing at this point
Steinberger adds and one reason they don't deform much could be that they're incredibly hard the
first hypothesis is that the blobs are extremely old going back billions of years to the early
Earth when our planet was still developing and its mantle which is today formed of solid rock
was an ocean of molten magma some areas of this layer retained impurities that had been mixed in
while it was still a liquid when the minerals started to solidify and crystallize these have
remained in situ for all this time and together they now make up the odd LL svps even though the
Earth's mantle is always gently spinning as hotter regions rise and cooler ones descend a global team
of geologists including Steinberger estimated in 2014 that this type of blob could easily
survive 3 billion years the formation of the blobs through tectonic processes is another option the
tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust are fractured as kids learn in school and they
are continually shifting and slipping beneath as well as over one another the shattered crustal
fragments descend to the Mantle's bottom and produce lumpy structures with a distinct chemical
composition from the surrounding Rock which some geologists think may be the source of the LL svps
lekki equates how the blobs may be altering the Earth's axis to spinning a book it's far easier
to do it flat than along the spine and having the weight disperse laterally makes the spin
more stable according to him generally spinning bodies tend to disperse the mass so that the bulk
is nearest to the equator as far from the spinning axis as feasible and that ends today's episode
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