Mysterious lava puddles in Earth's mantle may hold clues about the origin of life: 'These are not random oddities'

The illustration shows a cutaway revealing the interior of early Earth with a hot, melted layer above the boundary between the core and mantle. .

Two mysterious blobs deep inside Earth may hold clues about the origin of life on our planet, new research finds.

Deep beneath Earth's crust, in the mantle, lie two continent-sized blobs. These gigantic "lava puddles" cling to the planet's core, some 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) beneath the surface — and according to current theories of planetary evolution, they shouldn't be there.