Chinese Researchers Map 174,929 Deep-Earth Signals, Uncovering 6 New Core-Mantle Structures
Updated
Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 29
Chinese Researchers Map 174,929 Deep-Earth Signals, Uncovering 6 New Core-Mantle Structures
1 articles · Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 29
Summary
More than 174,000 faint seismic signals extracted from over 2 million earthquake recordings let Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers build a global map of small-scale structures near the core-mantle boundary and identify six previously undocumented zones.
The team used a deep-learning system on waveforms from nearly 5,000 earthquakes recorded between 1990 and 2024, then manually corrected the model’s errors to refine detection of weak PKP precursor waves.
That catalog of 174,929 high-quality precursor signals is more than 10 times larger than all previous studies combined, showing some features once thought isolated actually link into broader belts at the base of the mantle.
The newly highlighted regions—beneath high-latitude Eurasia, Central Asia and the South Atlantic among others—may reflect ancient subducted material, partial melting, mineral changes and interactions with large low-shear-velocity provinces.
The study, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, points to higher-resolution follow-up work that could sharpen models of mantle motion, volcanism, tectonics and even magnetic-field irregularities.