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Subterranean 'islands': strongholds in a potentially less turbulent world
Deeply hidden in Earth’s mantle there are two huge ‘islands’ with the size of a continent. New research shows that these regions are not only hotter than the surrounding graveyard of cold sunken tectonic plates, but also that they must be ancient: at least half a billion years old, perhaps even older. These observations contradict the idea of a well-mixed and fast flowing Earth’s mantle, a theory that is becoming more and more questioned.