Canberra, November 23, : , Researchers at Australian National University (ANU), have set out on an adventure to uncover the secrets of Earth’s innermost layers. According to Xinhua, the ANU-led team left on November 10, on a three week mission to recover 27 seismometers (instruments that measure the motion of ground during earthquakes) from the Southern Ocean floor.
These instruments, which were installed in October 2020 and point at the Earth’s centre, have been gathering data about extreme earthquakes underwater.
The data could help researchers better understand how the Earth’s inner layers work and the causes of tsunamis and underwater earthquakes.
Hrvoje Kalcic, chief scientist at ANU’s Research School of Earth Sciences, stated in Monday’s media release that “it’s in an region where the Australian and Pacific plates meet.”
Scientistically speaking, this could be the best payoff for the project because it may help solve one of the greatest puzzles in platetectonics: how subduction starts.
Researchers have been trying to answer this question for over a century, searching active and extinct subduction areas around the globe for clues, but the picture is still murky.
The team will need to retrieve the device from the Macquarie Ridge at a depth of approximately 5,500m.
This is a steeper slope than any other mountain on Earth.
For the 24-day journey, RV Tangaroa was commissioned by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.
Tkalcic stated that it can take as long as six hours to recover a seismometer, and two more hours to return to the surface.
He said that the instruments were placed around Macquarie Island in Southern Ocean’s Furious Fifties, an area renowned for extreme weather and seas.
“The weather often proved to be merciless in our instruments deployments.For approximately 40 percent of the time we were in the area, gale-force winds and severe waves forced us to shelter under the Macquarie Island lee.
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