Terrascan: Explore public deep earth scan datasets

6 hours ago

The visualization shows a live combination of 14 real tomography models, with color indicating seismic wave speed to infer rock temperature and stiffness (red for slow/hot, blue for fast/cold), and motion is inferred, not directly measured.
Features identified include subducted slabs, LLSVPs, ULVZs, mantle plumes, cratonic roots, and ridges, with some areas showing theory-based guesses where data is lacking.
The interface allows slicing through Earth's depths, comparing sharp seismic scan data with a blurry reference model (PREM) that becomes prominent in unscanned regions like the deep core.
Data processing involves averaging tomography models on a grid, smoothing, filtering by model agreement, and visualizing in 3-D, while extracted features are hand-curated from published literature.
Knowledge of Earth's interior relies on indirect methods like seismic data from earthquakes, gravity, magnetism, and lab physics, as direct drilling is limited to about 12 km.

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