Particle.news
Download on the App Store
6 ARTICLES
·
1h ago

Study Links Deep Mantle Hot Rock Structures to Persistent Patterns in Earth's Magnetic Field

Researchers combined paleomagnetic records with long-running geodynamo simulations to show that thermal contrasts at the core–mantle boundary leave lasting magnetic imprints.

image: ©Rost-9D | iStock
Image
Two enormous blobs of solid, superheated material located at the base of Earth’s mantle affect the underlying liquid outer core. Image credit: Biggin et al., doi: 10.1038/s41561-025-01910-1.

Overview

  • Two continent-sized, ultrahot rock structures about 2,900 km down beneath Africa and the Pacific have influenced the field for millions of years.
  • Supercomputer models paired with global paleomagnetic data reproduced key aspects of field behavior across roughly the past 265 million years.
  • Results point to strong temperature contrasts at the top of the outer core, with localized hot regions capped by the deep structures and a pole-to-pole ring of cooler rock around them.
  • The modeling indicates liquid iron flow may stagnate beneath hotter zones, creating long-lived regional signatures and stability in some field features.
  • The findings challenge the assumption of a perfectly time-averaged, rotation-aligned bar-magnet field and bear on reconstructions of ancient continents, climate, paleobiology, and resource formation; the work was published in Nature Geoscience on February 3, 2026.