New Magma Layer Found Deep in Earth's Mantle?
A layer of molten rock trapped since Earth's formation may exist where the solid mantle meets the core, a new study says.
The finding backs up theories that Earth's solid lower mantle once housed a magma "ocean," and that some remnant of that molten material still exists today, like jam between two cake layers.
"Some models consider the [early] Earth to have been completely or largely molten, and people are looking for possible remnants or relics of this molten state," said study co-author Guillaume Fiquet of the Institut de Minéralogie et de Physique des Milieux Condensés at France's Université Pierre et Marie Curie.
"Those models [suggest] that, as time passed and Earth solidified, some molten rock could have been trapped at the
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