The findings, detailed in the March 30 issue of the journal Science, will help geologists as they seek to understand how heat is transferred through the planet’s interior, which drives all geologic processes like earthquakes and volcanoes, and Earth’s magnetic field.
Robert van der Hilst of MIT and his colleagues examined an area beneath Central America by monitoring earthquake-generated seismic waves in real time.
The waves penetrate thousands of miles beneath Earth’s surface, effectively taking the temperature of the boundary between Earth’s core and the surrounding mantle, if you know how to read the data.
Here is how: The speed of the seismic waves indicates the chemical and physical properties of the material they encounter. By combining this seismic data with mineral physics, the team calculated the temperature at this boundary as well as above and below it.
