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Many of us look to the stars for answers to life’s most complex questions. But actually, some of the greatest mysteries lie beneath our very feet. One might think we’d know the Earth pretty well by now but, in fact, our planet’s core remains shrouded in enigma. Indeed, there are two gigantic blobs located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean that occupy around six per cent of the world’s entire volume. And yet, we’re still not entirely sure what they’re made of or where they came from. There are a number of hypotheses, including that they are piles of oceanic crust that have accumulated over billions of years. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But a more interesting theory is that they are huge chunks of an ancient planet that hit the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. To give an indication of just how massive these things are, the structure under Africa – an area known as Tuzo – is thought to be around 800km (497 miles) tall – the equivalent of some 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of one another, as IFLScience notes. The problem with determining the origin of these monster formations is that there are no direct ways of observing the Earth’s core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – reached a pretty staggering 12,263m (40,230ft), but that doesn’t even come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Our most effective tool for analysing what lies beneath the ground is a technique called seismic tomography, which looks at how waves of energy travel when earthquakes occur. Since rocks and liquids have different densities, the waves move through them at different speeds. By measuring the tremors from different points on the surface, geologists can determine what kind of material the waves are travelling through and, in so doing, map out the Earth’s interior. It was by using this technique that the two unusual structures – known as large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – were found. Waves travel more slowly in these areas – fondly known as “blobs” – than through the surrounding lower mantle, indicating that they’re made of something different. We can’t tell what this material is based on seismic tomography data alone, but some scientists like to believe that they are the remnants of an ancient planet called Theia – an idea known as the “giant impact hypothesis”. According to this hypothesis, around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth. This impact not only created the planet we call home today, but also threw off enough rock to form the moon that lights up our night skies. Some scientists suggest that some of Theia’s leftovers also sunk to the bottom of the planet, probably settling somewhere above the core – thereby forming at least one of the two LLSVPs. More Updates About Strange Blob Structures Inside Planet Earth youtu.be Experts have been investigating the area for decades but there’s still no way of knowing for sure just what these two giant blobs are. Still, studies into Theia have offered important insights into how the possible collision might have kickstarted key plate tectonic and mantle motion inside our planet – crucial processes for establishing the world on which we live. It’s also a useful reminder that we still have so much to learn about our planet and where we came from. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Zoom has provoked outrage among its users after a change to its terms of service. This week, the company made a number of changes to its terms of service that related to the way it uses people's data and the content of their calls. They have led to widespread criticism from users, some of whom have quit over what they said was overly expansive permissions. In particular, critics focused on a passage in which users agreed to Zoom's "access, use, collection, creation, modification, distribution, processing, sharing, maintenance, and storage" of data "for any purpose". The new terms said that data could be used for a variety of functions, including "machine learning or artificial intelligence" such was training new artificial intelligence models. Many feared that the expansive rules would mean that Zoom could, for instance, use the data of meetings to train generative artificial intelligence systems. A number of companies have faced backlash over fears that they could be gathering user data with a view to training artificial intelligence systems using it, and customers have become increasingly concerned about the potential invasion of privacy and ownership that could present. But now Zoom has said that the terms were misunderstood, and updated them with a new line intended to make clear that chats would not be used to train AI systems. "Zoom will not use audio, video or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent," the terms now read. In a blog post addressing the controversy, Zoom said that it had introduced two new generative AI features, aimed at making it easier to summarise meetings and help with chats. At the moment they are offered on a free trial basis and administrators can choose whether they are turned on. "When you choose to enable Zoom IQ Meeting Summary or Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose, you will also be presented with a transparent consent process for training our AI models using your customer content," the company said in its update. "Your content is used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services. And even if you chose to share your data, it will not be used for training of any third-party models." Read More Now even Zoom tells staff: ‘Come back to the office’ OpenAI launches bot that will crawl the internet to educate GPT PayPal launches dollar-backed cryptocurrency

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democratic Senator Joe Manchin urged the U.S. Treasury on Monday to adopt the "strictest possible