Our Earth’s inner core, a hot iron ball about the size of the dwarf planet Pluto, would have stopped spinning in the same direction as the rest of the planet. Until recently, this inner core of the Earth was believed to rotate even faster than the rest of the Earth’s crust. According to two Chinese researchers, things are different now.
About 5,000 kilometers below the Earth’s surface, this ‘planet within a planet’ can rotate on its own because it swims in the so-called outer core of the Earth, which consists of liquid metal. Yang and Song argue that this massive iron core, which previous doctrines said was spinning faster than the rest of the Earth’s interior, has stopped spinning faster. “We think the inner core is rotating back and forth relative to the Earth’s surface, like a seesaw,” they told AFP.
The researchers’ findings are controversial
It may even rotate in the opposite direction, write scientists Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song of Peking University in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. They found that the inner core almost stopped spinning around 2009 and then started spinning in the opposite direction. But the result of their study is controversial in science.
Does Earth’s core rotation change cyclically?
How this solid inner iron core, which is about 1,500 miles in diameter, rotates has long been the subject of debate among scientists. Using earthquake wave measurements, Yang and Song speculate that the rotation of the inner core varies periodically, with a period of about 70 years. Other researchers criticize that a much longer observation period would be needed to confirm such a change in rotation.
Although the core is only one-sixth the volume of the entire Earth, it contributes about one-third of its mass due to its high density. Earthquake wave assessments showed that the Earth’s core consists of a liquid outer core, in which the Earth’s magnetic field is created – and a solid inner core.
The little knowledge we have so far about our Earth’s inner core comes from measuring the tiny differences in seismic waves – caused by earthquakes or sometimes nuclear explosions – as they traverse the Earth’s center.
Source: Krone
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