Seismic waves tell us that something unusual is happening in the lowermost few hundred kilometers of Earth’s mantle. Beneath Africa and the Pacific lie two enormous thermochemical structures known as Large Low-Shear-Velocity Provinces (LLSVPs). These “large blobs” are slower to transmit shear waves, but beyond that, their physical nature remains one of the biggest open questions in deep Earth geod ...[Read More]
What’s blobbing inside the Earth? – insights from numerical modelling
Figure 1: Snapshot from a mantle convection simulation showing sinking tectonic plates at subduction zones and rising mantle plumes originating from deep LLSVPs (large low-shear-velocity provinces). These BLOBs at the base of the mantle influence plume formation and seismic anisotropy. (taken from Roy et al., 2025)
