We Found the Remains of Another Planet Inside Earth

A major discovery was recently made were far ranging implications for the field of geology. As, the remains of an ancient planet were found deep in Earth's lower mantle, and this seems to be linked to not only mantle plumes and flood basalts but also may have been the missing link necessary to initiate plate tectonics. This video will discuss this discovery involving the remains of a planet known as Theia.

Note: I personally did not make this discovery, but rather a student at Arizona State University did!

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Google Earth imagery used in this video: ©Google & Data Providers

Various licenses used in sections of this video (not the entire video, this video as a whole does not completely fall under one of these licenses) and/or in this video's thumbnail image (and this list does not include every license used in this video and/or thumbnail image):

Sources/Citations:
[2] Bono, Richard & Tarduno, John & Bunge, Hans-peter. (2019). Hotspot motion caused the Hawaiian-Emperor Bend and LLSVPs are not fixed. Nature Communications. 10. 10.1038/s41467-019-11314-6. CC BY 4.0.
[3] Yuan, Q., Li, M., Desch, S. J., and Ko, B., “Giant Impact Origin for the Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces”, vol. 2020, 2020.
[5] Yuan, Q., Li, M., "Dynamics in Earth’s Mantle: Constraints from Planetary Scale to Nanoscale", Thesis, 2022, Arizona State University
[6] U.S. Geological Survey

0:00 A Major Discovery
0:23 LLSVPs
0:43 Moon Formation
1:21 Location of LLSVPs
1:58 Speculation
2:17 Link to Mantle Plumes?
2:44 Plate Tectonics Link?
3:29 A Mars Problem

[GeologyHub]

This discovery which was made by a fellow scientist (not me) at Arizona State University (the university I got my degree from) is part of the reason I decided to cover this discovery. However, it has wide ranging implications for geology, especially for the first 1.5 billion years of our planet. Edit: A bit of clarification. The speculation I gave regarding the initial generation of plate tectonics involves lithospheric drip; a pre-plate tectonic process which is no longer the dominant force for tectonics on our planet.

[EatsLikeADuck]

We all owe Theia a debt of gratitude for going full Leroy Jenkins on our planet.

[CTP]

Wow amazing! This could help explain earth's uneven gravity

[Sanquinity]

To be precise, the current most prevalent hypothesis is that those unusually "different" areas in the mantle are the remnants of Theia. We don't actually have any real evidence that that is indeed the case.

[swainscheps]

GH - your 1993 Microsoft Paint animations are perfect.

Seriously! So many content providers obviously spend way too much time on slick animations to go with uninteresting/weak information…glad you focus on what’s important.

[kaiying]

I'm here for all the content you want to make on this!!!! As a very amateur astronomer the Theia hypothesis has fascinated me since I heard about it.

[kadourimdou]

3:33 So it may mean, no Moon, no Plate Tectonics, no life.

[freeloader]

Perhaps this has incredible implications concerning the development of life on Earth, and could also teach us how rare life really is in the universe!

Neat. Thanks for sharing. I think you deserve a donation for this.

[DAYBROK]

this makes sense, theia gave earth not only a large stabilizing moon but a bit more mass to help hang onto its atmosphere. then there is the tilt wouldnt that be something theia also gave us?

[ManiacRacing]

Theia is the gift that keeps on giving

[CraigInNC]

I want more info on this. Wow. Interesting how it lines up with the East African rift zone and the deep earthquake zones of the West Pacific.
I want get more information from the study!

[NDHFilms]

Remarkable discovery! I always appreciate your coverage of geology.

[Daneelro]

To strengthen the hotspot theory, you'll need to check ancient hotspots, too. What about the Siberian traps and the Deccan Traps, or past and present hotspots under North America?

[JoshDoingLinux]

What actually surprises me about this is despite how long its been the remnants of theia (assuming that's confirmed somehow) that it hasn't homogenized with the rest of the mantle/core.

[Arhius]

It's really great to see this content here. It was posted earlier in Anton's Petrov channel which I also recommend very eagerly. However here we received a bunch of information from geologist perspective which is really worthy and something new!

[TruFrag]

No Theia, No Plate Tectonics and No Moon; No Tides... No Life. This gives us the blueprint for what it took to form life here. Now, we know just how rare life is.

[mt_baldwin]

Oh there's an explanation for why it's in two big blobs. One blob is the direct result of the impact, Theia's main corpse. The second is from the debris kicked out into orbit from the impact, this debris coalesced into two big chunks of material, one bigger and one smaller, the smaller one got kicked out further to become our moon while the bigger one crashed back into Earth in a second impact (this would've been very shortly after the original impact).
There's no way to get the moon without this exact scenario, Without two blobs, one bigger and one smaller and the smaller one forming farther away, the proto moon blob either gets flung out too far and flies off rapidly or more often crashes back into Earth.

[scillyautomatic]

I can not stress this enough... this is COOL! Thanks for his update!

[explorationandhistorywithethan]

Something hit Venus to tip it upside-down, and Mercury was hit loosing it's crust. It would be cool to know what hit these planets to deform them.

[vask]

Basically Earths heart implant, that keeps the plate tectonics run until today. Otherwise Earth would look like Venus.