Blogocentric Formulations

Underground Protoplanets

Mysterious Lumps in the Earth's Mantle May Be Remains of the Crash That Formed the Moon  

This article from Smithsonian Magazine highlights the prevailing theory that the moon was formed around 4.5 billion years ago when a very young Earth planet collided with a protoplanet called Theia, which was approximately the size of Mars. According to the article, the impact sent debris into orbit around the Earth, which then accreted into the form of the Moon. Which is kind of cool, I guess, but the buried lede in this story for me is the newer idea that fragments of Theia may have become lodged in our planet. In fact, there are apparently two continent-sized pieces of material in the Earth's lower mantle that scientists theorize could be pieces of Theia. One is beneath the continent of Africa and one is beneath the Pacific Ocean.

There's some debate in the scientific community about whether these pieces of Theia are well preserved into the continent-type masses that newer research suggests is down there, or if the pieces more evenly mixed in the mantle and have just become too intermingled to tell them apart. But, either way, the far more interesting implication of this story - at least for me - is that there is extraterrestrial material beneath the surface of our planet.

From a writing standpoint, there are so many possibilities the information in this article creates. One of science fiction's best devices for how humans evolve to the point where they can start exploring the stars is the discovery of alien technology ... but then you have the challenge of explaining how it was discovered and evolved to the point where we harnessed something more technologically advanced than we are. Think of all the possibilities now that there's bonafide alien fragments inside our own planet! The ideas for a story using this as background are already percolating ...