There is a place on Earth that has the weakest gravitational zone in the world, and it is right in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Scientists call it the “Indian Ocean Geoid Anomaly”.
A real mystery. In the Indian Ocean, satellites have found areas of lowest gravity on Earth. Studies are underway to determine why. It’s legitimate to think that gravity is the same everywhere. However, this is completely wrong.
Indeed, the Earth is not a perfectly spherical, uniform sphere. According to scientists, it looks more like potatoes.
And because the various seas and their assemblies create a relief that can be likened to mounds and cavities. This difference in relief causes the mass to vary, as well as changing gravity and tensile forces.
Thus, the region of lowest gravity on earth is located nearly 1,200 kilometers southwest of the Indian Ocean and spans over 3 million square kilometers. The ocean here is 105 meters lower than usual.
How to explain?
Several studies have been conducted to explain this phenomenon. Specifically, Institute of Science of India and geophysicist Debanjan Pal created a series of 19 computer simulations of movement in the mantle.
The mantle is a layer that lies beneath the Earth’s crust nearly 40 kilometers away.
Therefore, this simulation reproduces the movements and changes that have occurred over the past 140 million years.
The 19 scenarios consist of different parameters, including magma “flow” in the mantle.
Six of these 19 scenarios correspond to the case of Indian Ocean gravity because it has the same characteristics as the subsidence of the old Tethys tectonic plate.
This plate is all that is left of the ancient ocean, after Africa and India separated 120 million years ago, creating the Indian Ocean.
Therefore, it is this subsidence and flow of magma that causes certain movements, pushing certain parts of the earth to fall into the mantle.
The falls were rebalanced by the emergence of hot, less dense mantle plumes that emerged under the Indian Ocean, about 20 million years ago.
Today, it is the only theory that can explain that there is less gravity in this zone.
