'Wind' from Earth's middle layer blows through a secret passage beneath Panama

Live Science ^ | published 15 days ago | Stephanie Pappas

[SunkenCiv]

A geological secret passage beneath Panama may explain why rocks from Earth's mantle are found more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from where they originated.

This opening, located some 62 miles (100 km) below Earth's surface, may allow a flow of mantle materials to travel all the way from beneath the Galápagos Islands to beneath Panama.

This never-before-discovered form of transport may also help explain why Panama has very few active volcanoes. On the west coast of Central America, the Cocos tectonic plate is diving down and pushes oceanic crust under the continental crust of the North American, Caribbean and Panama tectonic plates, a process called subduction. This subduction zone creates a line of volcanoes called the Central American Volcanic Arc where lava pushes through the boundaries. But the volcanism stops in western Panama, which sits on the Panama plate , said David Bekaert, a postdoctoral scholar in marine chemistry and geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

This relative peace has long been a mystery. Now, Bekaert and his colleagues report in a new study published Nov. 23 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the culprit may be a window-like opening in the Cocos tectonic plate that's being pushed down toward Earth's center...

The mantle flow the team discovered is under-studied, Bekaert said, but there are unexplained anomalies in the chemistry of the mantle all over the world. The team hopes to conduct a similar analysis in Chile next, but ultimately wants to expand the method around the globe.

"No one's been thinking about this process before," Bekaert said, "so I just want to consider all the data."

[DannyTN]

I was thinking that air in the center of the world would stagnate if there is only an opening at the polar cap. So this would allow the wind to circulate through the world at the center of the earth.

Obligatory picture of Anita Briem

[hadaclueonce]

Your government grant money at work

[joe fonebone]

I got another theory..
These underground “tubes” are actually quite common and act as arteries and veins, transporting lava about, helping to heat the surface.
When this flow is interrupted, it forms an aneurysm that eventually bursts (volcano)..

[Jumper]

I probably drank from that same muddy water when we were left in the jungle for four days with one day’s rations. Eventually we made our way 35 miles away and we used the machatte that I was carrying to hack out an LZ for a single chopper to ferry our platoon out of the jungle. That happened during an earthquake in Guatemala in which all the Army assets were diverted to support. We all had sugar cane growing wild to chew on but otherwise we were drinking mud water from the jungle. Man we tough young paratroopers. The reason we went out was to chase Cuban soldiers that were in the country, illegally, and it wasn’t long before some dictator was shot down or crashed his plane.... We were given steaks at the mess hall but we couldn’t eat more than a few bites. All of us got seriously buzzed on two 6% beers after all that. Good times. Never forgot the black water mud and sucking the canteens thru the clothing and it clogging up like cig butts with nicotine.