In the years since the practice of seismic tomography was first introduced researchers have gathered enough data to provide the world with detailed accurate maps of the layers of the Earth's inside. More recently, scientists have begun to focus more attention on the boundaries between layers, rather that the layers themselves. Many believe that the future of seismic tomography, geophysics and earthquake prediction lies in understanding these boundaries, chemical processes that occur in their vecinity and how such events affect the Earth's surface