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Jul 30, 2023

Indian Ocean's Extraordinary Gravity Hole

Updated: Aug 12, 2023

The ocean is still full of mysteries, and one of the weirdest of all is a giant 'gravity hole' in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It has baffled scientists for decades, but researchers might now have worked out an explanation for this bizarre phenomenon.


Globe featuring the Indian Ocean

The gravity hole, known as the 'Indian Ocean Geoid Low,' isn’t actually a hole, but a region where gravity is lower than average. Extraordinarily, the water level here is 340 feet (103.6m) lower than the surrounding area. The dip, which starts just off India’s southern tip, spans 1.2 million square miles.


While the massive gravity hole was first discovered back in 1948 by a Dutch geophysicist surveying gravity, it's been a head-scratcher for scientists until, perhaps, now. Researchers in India have new revelations about how the anomaly came to be.


They say the hole was formed when plumes of low-density magma rose up from the Earth’s mantle. Those plumes were created by the remains of a sunken tectonic plate called Tethys, which was lost when India and Asia collided 50 million years ago. It was the biggest continental collision in Earth’s history and contributed to the creation of the Himalayan mountain range.


According to the new research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, geophysicists at the Indian Institute of Science used computer simulations to determine how the gravity hole was formed. In some of the simulations they were able to see the geoid actually taking shape.


However, as you might expect, not all scientists are convinced that the research is solid proof of the gravity hole’s formation story. But the researchers are confident about their findings.

 
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