Mysterious structures exist in the Earth’s mantle that have perplexed geophysicists

Geophysicists learned about the presence of these mysterious formations inside the Earth back in the 70s of the XX century. But besides the very fact of their existence, little is known to scientists about strange clusters inside the earth's mantle. Moreover, while humanity explores distant galaxies and reveals the secrets of black holes, it does not have the right technology to study its own planet.

Accumulations of compressed rock were detected by deviations of seismic waves. When moving through these structures, the waves noticeably lost in speed, so in the scientific community they were called "regions with a low shear rate" (in the English language literature LLSVPs - large low-shear-velocity provinces).

At present, two such structures are found inside the Earth within the boundaries of the mantle, which are located at a depth of several hundred kilometers. The first is located under Africa, and the second is under the central part of the Pacific Ocean. These rock clusters have an irregular shape and heterogeneous structure, and the size of the dense structures is comparable to the size of the continents. Here's what it looks like in a three-dimensional model, where areas of rock accumulation are shown in red.

Geophysicists continue to study these mysterious structures. They are interesting not only from the point of view of the general knowledge of our planet, but also in terms of their possible impact on the tectonics of lithospheric plates and the manifestation of volcanism on Earth.