Geologists Zero In On Deep Hot Plumes

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A pair of gigantic lava blobs, each the size of a continent, sit far beneath Earth's surface, and a new study has learned more about their composition.

The study, published June 20 in the journal Nature Geoscience, found each of the lava lamp-like blobs sit at the base of the planet's mantle, just above the core, miles and miles below the surface. Contained by structures that are 100 times taller than Mount Everest, scientists hope to learn more about these chambers, which may reveal more secrets about how the Earth formed billions of years ago, Live Science reports.

What's especially interesting about this study is the revelation that the chambers' composition may be different from that of the surrounding mantle, but the scientists admit they'll need to further study the area to confirm that.

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"While the origin and composition of the blobs are yet unknown, we suspect they hold important clues as to how the Earth was formed and how it works today," Edward Garnero, a professor at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration and lead author of the study, said in a release from the university.

The blobs, one of which is located under the Atlantic Ocean and Africa, while the other sits under the Pacific Ocean, slowly rise up through the mantle, which reminded the scientists of a lava lamp. The authors of the study believe the speed of these blobs are affected by the type of rock through which they're traveling, but they'll need deeper analysis to determine if that's why the speeds alternate.

And although these blobs usually stay beneath the surface, if one were to poke up above the crust, it would result in huge eruptions that would last millions of years, according to Garnero.

"The next [massive eruption] could be on its way," he told Live Science, "but it could be a million years away."

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