Mt. Everest, standing at over 29,000 feet, is widely regarded as the tallest mountain on Earth. But did you know that there are mountain ranges within the Earth’s interior that have peaks up to four times higher than Everest? A recent BBC report delves into the years-long efforts of researchers studying the planet’s interior to unravel the secrets of these hidden mountains. Discovered in 1996 by scientists investigating seismic waves passing through the core-mantle boundary, these mountains are located between the Earth’s molten core and its mantle.
According to the BBC, researchers studying 25 earthquakes found that seismic waves slowed down at certain “jagged” points on the core-mantle boundary. It was discovered that these points are actually deeply buried mountain ranges, with peaks reaching heights between 1.7 and 24 miles. Despite this knowledge, these mountains remain largely mysterious. As the BBC explains, “no one knows how they got there, or what they’re made of.” These mountain ranges can be found in various locations around the world, with one particularly massive range located beneath the Hawaiian Islands.
There are several theories regarding the origins of these peaks, with one of the leading possibilities being that they result from the Earth’s core superheating the rocky mantle above. In a press release from the University of Alabama about the deep mountain range study, geophysicist Samantha Hansen stated, “seismic investigations, such as ours, provide the highest resolution imaging of the interior structure of our planet, and we are finding that this structure is vastly more complicated than once thought.”
But the mysteries of the Earth’s interior don’t end with these massive mountains. As NBC reported in 2019, scientists are also intrigued by enormous “mantle blobs” floating just above the Earth’s core. These blobs, roughly the size of Australia, can generate plumes of molten material—similar to the ones that cause eruptions from massive supervolcanoes like the one beneath Yellowstone National Park. (Read the full BBC story.)
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