USC scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery of the nature of the enigmatic inner core of the earth and for the first time revealed that this 1,500 miles wide ball of iron and nickel changes.
The inner core of the planet was previously seen as a hard, solid sphere. But a New study It has found that his edges are softer than realized and actually change when they press against the liquid iron and the nickel in the outer core of the earth.
“The melted outer core is generally known as turbulent, but his turbulence did not bother his neighbors the inner core in a human time scale,” said John Vidale, professor of USC earth sciences, who led the study. “What we observe for the first time in this study is probably the outer core that disturbs the inner core.”
Vidale said it was likely that the outer core will deform the shape of the inner core and press it one or two kilometers in areas in which they have rubbed with strength. These results were published on Monday in a study that was carried out together with researchers at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cornell University and the University of Utah.
When his team members caught their research, they did not expect to document structural changes in the inner core of the earth. Instead, they focused on learning more about slowing down their rotation.
Earlier examinations have shown that the rotation of the inner core slows down relative to the rotation of the external crust, which leads to tiny changes in the earth's earth and subtly influences the length of one day. Although these time changes are only valued as a question of milliseconds a year, they can accumulate on eons.
Vidale said that he was busy examining diagrams, recording the soil vibrations through seismic waves if a data record “strangely took off from the others”.
“It later became clear to me that I stared at evidence that the inner core was not solid,” he added.
His team studied seismic data from 121, which repeated earthquakes at 42 locations near the southern sandwich islands of Antarctica between 1991 and 2024.
Repeated earthquakes are quake with the same size and the same place. If a few repeating earthquakes occur while the inner core of the earth is in the same place in its rotation, the scientists would assume that the seismic data recorded would be the same in both earthquakes.
However, the strange data set that vidale encountered logic could be seen that the differences they observed were probably caused by changes in the shape of the inner core.
“We see these subtle differences,” he said. “And if they are not through the inside of the core, the most likely possibility is that there is a deformation in the soft outermost inner core.”
The scientific effects of this revelation are not yet clear, but Vidale hopes that they can help researchers to disguise further secrets in connection with the inner core and to lead to a better understanding of the heat and magnetic fields of the earth.
“We hope that it has a broader effects,” he said. “The reason why we do this is that we like to solve puzzles and the stranger and harder the mystery we can solve, the happier we are.”