Huge 'Ocean' Discovered Inside Earth

Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.


The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet's deep mantle. 


The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.


Looking down deep

The pair analyzed more than 600,000 seismograms — records of waves generated by earthquakes traveling through the Earth—collected from instruments scattered around the planet. 

They noticed a region beneath Asia where seismic waves appeared to dampen, or "attenuate," and also slow down slightly. "Water slows the speed of waves a little," Wysession explained. "Lots of damping and a little slowing match the predictions for water very well."

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