Classic sci-fi writer Jules Verne once imagined a whole subterranean landscape deep inside the planet, complete with lost prehistoric species and plant life. The book was aptly titled Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Now, a new research is revealing features in the underworld resembling structures on the surface. Far from a bubbling hot mess, there are mountains deep below rivalling anything up here… Yes, there’s a chance that these mountains are bigger than anything on the surface of the Earth… So taller than the Everest!
Geophysicists from Princeton University in the US and the Chinese Academy of Sciences used the echoes of a massive earthquake that struck Bolivia two decades ago to piece together the topography deep beneath the surface.
The earthquake
On 9 June 1994, an 8.2 magnitude tremor rocked a sparsely populated region of the Amazon in Bolivia. Nothing this powerful had been seen in decades, with shocks being felt as far away as Canada.
“Earthquakes this big don’t come along very often,” says geoscientist Jessica Irving.
Not only was it big, it was deep, with a focal point estimated at a depth of just under 650 kilometres (about 400 miles). Unlike quakes that grind through the crust, the energy from these monsters can shake the whole mantle like a bowl of jelly.