Because these conditions correspond to a depth of about 2600 km and the D" seismic discontinuity occurs at similar depths, the perovskite to post-perovskite phase change is considered to be the origin of such seismic discontinuities in this region. Post-perovskite also holds great promise for mapping experimentally determined information regarding the temperatures and pressures of its transformation into direct information regarding temperature variations in the D" layer once the seismic discontinuities attributed to this transformation have been sufficiently mapped out. Such information can be used, for example, to:  For these reasons the finding of the MgSiO3-post-perovskite phase transition is considered by many geophysicists to be the most important discovery in deep Earth science in several decades, and was only made possible by the concerted efforts of mineral physics scientists around the world as they sought to increase the range and quality of LHDAC experiments and as "ab initio" calculations attained predictive power. The sheet structure of post-perovskite makes the compressibility of the "b" axis higher than that of the "a" or "c" axis. This anisotropy may yield the morphology of a platy crystal habit parallel to the (010) plane; the seismic anisotropy observed in the D" region might qualitatively (but not quantitatively) be explained by this characteristic. Theory predicted the (110) slip associated with particularly favorable stacking faults and confirmed by later experiments. Some theorists predicted other slip systems, which await experimental confirmation. In 2005 and 2006 Ono and Oganov published two papers predicting that post-perovskite should have high electrical conductivity, perhaps two orders of magnitude higher than perovskite's conductivity. In 2008 Hirose's group published an experimental report confirming this prediction. A highly conductive post-perovskite layer provides an explanation for the observed decadal variations of the length of day. Another potentially important effect that needs to be better characterized for the post-perovskite phase transition is the influence of other chemical components that are known to be present to some degree in Earth's lowermost mantle. The phase transition pressure (characterized by a two-phase loop in this system), was initially thought to decrease as the FeO content increases, but some recent experiments suggest the opposite. However, it is possible that the effect of Fe2O3 is more relevant as most of iron in post-perovskite is likely to be trivalent (ferric).