Scientists have picked up a strange shift in Earth’s gravity, and what’s unsettling is that nothing on the surface seems capable of causing it. In this video, we talk about how satellites measure gravity, why tiny changes matter, and how mass moving deep inside the planet can quietly change Earth’s pull. Some of these signals point to processes happening far below our feet, like mantle movement, melting ice redistributing weight, or changes in Earth’s interior structure. We break down what scientists expected to see versus what actually showed up in the data, without getting lost in heavy physics. It’s one of those moments where Earth reminds us it’s still very much alive — and doing things we’re only just starting to notice 🌍 Credit: GRACE-FO: By NASA/JPL-Caltech, https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/36/grace-fo-rendering/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70619532 GRACE spacecraft model 2: By NASA - https://science.nasa.gov/toolkits/spacecraft-icons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58302513 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Perovskite-155026: By Rob Lavinsky, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10146594 Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
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00:00We know more about space than we do about the ocean.
00:05We know more about the ocean than we do about the Earth's core.
00:11But how do we study something that lies more than a thousand miles beneath our feet?
00:16All the enough, you need to fly into space.
00:19Thanks to satellites orbiting the planet, scientists have discovered something strange at the very heart of the planet.
00:26News about mysterious signals from space barely surprises anyone.
00:31But how about this?
00:33We detected strange signals coming from deep beneath our own home.
00:38Before we go into those signals, we need to understand why it's so important to study what's inside the planet.
00:45How does the core affect us?
00:47Our lives depend on it in several crucial ways.
00:51First, the core plays a fundamental role in gravity.
00:54We don't drift off into space because a massive spherical mass of molten metal locks us to the surface.
01:02Second, it powers Earth's magnetic field.
01:06Dangerous cosmic radiation and solar wind that could scorch everything are blocked thanks to the planet's magnetic field.
01:14And third, the inner processes of the Earth influence earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
01:20Any disturbance inside the core and mantle can change life on the planet.
01:24And recently, scientists recorded something unusual coming from down there.
01:30At the beginning of this century, the United States and Germany launched a mission called GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment.
01:39At first, this project used two satellites to track how water moved around the planet and how glaciers were melting.
01:47But the satellites could also measure Earth's gravitational field.
01:51If gravity was slightly stronger or weaker in some region, one of the satellites would be pulled toward that spot, and the other would measure the change in distance.
02:01In very simple terms, the heavier something is, the stronger its gravitational pull.
02:07In certain parts of the planet, gravity can be slightly higher because of large geological shifts, ocean currents, or melting ice.
02:15But between 2006 and 2008, the GRACE satellites detected a strange change in gravity along the coast of Africa.
02:25Melting ice, water movement, and other natural phenomena couldn't explain the anomaly.
02:31No one knew what it was at the time.
02:32But years later, scientists suggested that the nature of this signal was coming from the Earth's core.
02:40Researchers noticed that some minerals, like perovskite, can undergo a phase transition when exposed to enormous pressure and extreme heat.
02:49And there are many perovskites lying in the upper layers of the mantle.
02:55When the internal structure of this mineral reshapes, it becomes denser and shifts the surrounding rocks.
03:01Deep underground, this harder, solid part moves the softer, molten rock.
03:06These movements reach the molten outer core and slightly deform it.
03:11This deformation inside the core alters the flow of molten iron.
03:15And this deep current of liquid metal directly affects Earth's magnetic field.
03:21That's why satellites recorded those fluctuations.
03:25So how does all of this affect us?
03:28We launch satellites, we use compasses, we rely on GPS.
03:33All of this works only because gravity and the magnetic field are stable.
03:38And both depend on the core.
03:40That's why it's so important to study the Earth's heart.
03:45And to do that, we don't need to dig thousands of miles.
03:49Movements on the surface can reveal what is happening inside.
03:55Studying vibrations in the crust, recording gravitational shifts, calculating, modeling, and forming hypotheses.
04:03It all sounds a little boring.
04:05Is there another way to figure out what's happening down there?
04:07We sent voyagers into space, and some of them have already left the solar system.
04:14We descend into the depths of the Mariana Trench inside bathyskifs.
04:18So what's the problem with drilling a shaft deep into the Earth's crust?
04:23Humanity actually has some experience with this.
04:27In the 1970s, Soviet geologists began drilling the Kola Supra Deep borehole.
04:32It became, and remains, the deepest artificial borehole ever created.
04:38Its depth reaches 7.6 miles, deeper than the Mariana Trench and higher than Mount Everest.
04:45More than 50 years have passed, and humanity has not gone deeper than 7.6 miles.
04:51And do you know where the Earth's core begins?
04:55At about 1,800 miles down.
04:58That's almost 7 times farther than the distance to the International Space Station.
05:03To reach the core, we would need to drill a hole 230 times deeper than the Kola Supra Deep.
05:09But that project was shut down in 1992, and the borehole was closed in 2005.
05:15What stopped us from digging deeper?
05:18First, the density of the rock.
05:21In the early stages, the drill easily cut through granite.
05:24But around 4.3 miles down, the rock became much harder.
05:29The drill broke several times.
05:31Workers had to change the drilling direction to pass through softer layers.
05:35Eventually, the borehole shape looked like a string of lights hanging on a Christmas tree.
05:41Another problem was heat.
05:42The deeper the engineers went, the hotter it became.
05:46Scientists expected that past a depth of 10,000 feet, the temperature would be around 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
05:53In reality, the harder they worked, the worse it got.
05:57Eventually, it reached 356 degrees Fahrenheit.
06:02The hottest place on Earth is the Sonoran Desert along the Mexican-U.S. border.
06:08Temperatures there can reach 177 degrees Fahrenheit.
06:11That's twice as cool as inside that terrifying borehole.
06:17And the challenges did not stop there.
06:19At a depth of about 14,800 feet, the rock became porous.
06:24The extreme heat gave it a strange plasticity.
06:27Instead of solid stone, the drill had to cut through something more like hot, softened material that was almost impossible to drill.
06:35On top of that, the stability of the shaft became a danger.
06:40At such depths, the walls could collapse at any moment.
06:43To drill deeper, humanity would need completely new technology.
06:47A drill capable of working at 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
06:52That is the temperature scientists expect in the upper mantle, located just beneath the crust.
06:57And to reach it, we would need to drill 25 miles down.
07:02Almost three times deeper than the Kola Superdeep.
07:04There are many rumors about what the engineers supposedly discovered in that hole.
07:10The most popular claim is that they heard the screams of thousands of people who were stuck in the fiery underworld.
07:17Other fake stories claim that the workers went insane after seeing something horrific at the bottom.
07:23And that's why the project was stopped.
07:25But if we ignore these myths, what did scientists actually find?
07:30They learned that the existing temperature model of Earth's interior was wrong.
07:34It was far hotter down there than expected.
07:37Geologists thought they would find the so-called Conrad discontinuity.
07:41A transition from granite to basalt.
07:44They found no such boundary.
07:47The real discovery was a liquid at incredible depths.
07:50Scientists found cracks filled with briny water.
07:53This changed our understanding of the crust.
07:56People used to believe it was completely solid.
07:58But now it appears full of fractures and channels through which water can move.
08:03Where did it come from?
08:05Geologists think the fluid was squeezed out of the rocks by enormous pressure,
08:10as water is wrung out of a sponge.
08:12But the most astonishing discovery was...
08:15Life!
08:15At about 4.5 miles down, engineers found ancient fossils of single-celled marine organisms.
08:22They were nearly 2 billion years old, and they had survived at such extreme heat and pressure.
08:29Let's imagine that one day we actually reached the mantle.
08:32What would that give us?
08:34What would we expect to see?
08:36We would finally understand how Earth formed billions of years ago,
08:40how the core, mantle, and crust developed, and how plate tectonics works.
08:46We'd know how the plates push and pull against each other.
08:49We'd gain a deeper understanding of earthquakes.
08:52Researchers also hope to find extremophiles.
08:55These are primitive organisms that can withstand extreme heat and pressure.
09:01If we discover life near the mantle or even within it,
09:04scientists will study it closely and try to understand how it manages to survive under such brutal conditions.
09:11If we learn what keeps life alive in the most hostile environment beneath our feet,
09:17we might learn how to protect life in other extreme places,
09:21from the depths of the ocean to distant planets.
09:23Studying the heart of our planet could reveal technologies we can barely imagine today.
09:29Our future might depend on the mysteries hidden beneath our own world.
09:37That's it for today.
09:38So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:43Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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