According to foreign media reports, Japanese scientists believe they have found and identified an "unidentified element" in the Earth's core.
They believe it is the element that makes up a significant proportion of our planet's core, after iron and nickel, and have been searching for it for decades.
Now, by replicating the high temperatures and pressures deep inside Earth's core, scientists have experimentally concluded that this element is most likely silicon.
The discovery could lead to a better understanding of how our world came to be.
"We believe that silicon is a dominant element - about 5 percent of the weight [of the Earth's core] may be dissolved into an alloy of iron and nickel," said Eiji Otani of the University of Tokyo, who led the study.
