For decades, scientists were wondering about the possible explanations for a huge gravity hole in the middle of the Indian Ocean. No, it’s not a physical hole but an area in the Indian Ocean where the gravity of the Earth is lower than average. After years of research looking for underneath the ocean, a new study has finally found that the researchers should have looked around, not underneath.
A report published by the news platform Business Insider reveals that the gravity hole which was known as the Indian Ocean geoid low was possibly due to plumes of molten rock which was rising from the remains of an ancient hotbed.
Gravity varies across Earth
The variation of gravitational forces over the surface of the Earth is not news. A dense continent can have more gravitational force than a zone where the crust is thinner. But, the variation in gravity in the Indian Ocean puzzled scientists for decades.
“I think what people generally assume is that there must be something low density underneath that’s causing that,” a geodynamics researcher at GFZ German Research Centre of Geosciences, told Business Insider.
“But in that paper, they have actually a different theory,” he said.
Movement of tectonic plates
Geophysicist Attreyee Ghosh and doctoral student Debanjan Pal from the Indian Institute of Science and Research, Bangalore expanded the scope of their research and plotted 19 different scenarios over a period of 140 million years. The computer-generated scenarios observed the movement of tectonic plates around the gravity hole.
They discovered that the possible reason for the gravity hole is the plumes of magma. “It’s something you could have thought of before, you just wouldn’t think of it because you tend to think there must be something underneath,” said Steinberger, who was not involved in the study.
120 million years ago….
The phenomena might have originated 120 million years ago when the supercontinent Gondwana land separated. As the Indian plate separated from the African plate, it smashed into the European plate and the ocean called Tethys was squeezed between the continental plates.
Some parts of these plates are still melting back into the deep Earth’s interior and generating low-intensity magma and creating a gravity hole.
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Updated: 07 Jul 2023, 09:19 PM IST
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