Unless we are violently jolted by whirling, crushing fault lines in the form of an earthquake or volcanic explosion, we are unaware of the churnings occurring beneath the surface of the Earth. The Earth’s inner core suddenly stopped spinning and then switched to an opposing spin orientation, according to a recent study.
According to the study that was published in Nature Geoscience, the globally consistent pattern points to a recent stop in inner-core rotation. In 2009, the rotation abruptly stopped, and then, surprise, it began to rotate again. Long held theory among scientists is that the inner core swings back and forth in relation to the Earth’s surface.
What is earth’s inner core?
The crust, mantle, and core make up the three layers that make up the Earth.
When scientists were looking at seismic waves from worldwide earthquakes, they first found Earth’s inner core in 1936. The Earth’s core, which is approximately 7000 kilometers wide and is composed of a solid iron core encased in a liquid iron shell, was disclosed by a change in the waves.
According to a 1996 Nature study, there has been little but consistent change in the travel periods of seismic waves as they pass through the Earth’s inner core during the past three decades. The inner core’s rotation, which is approximately 1° per year quicker than the crust’s and mantle’s daily rotation, provides the best explanation for this fluctuation.
The Peaking University team analyzed earthquakes primarily from the years 1995 to 2021, and the results showed that the core may have stopped rotating around 2009 and may be in the process of reversing its direction of rotation.
What happens next?
Researchers have asserted that there are connections between the planet’s crust, mantle, and core and that the rotation of the core is tied to fluctuations in day length and may result in minute variations in the precise amount of time it takes for Earth to rotate on its axis.
As a result of gravitational coupling and the transfer of angular momentum from the core and mantle to the surface, the scientists claimed that the data show evidence of dynamic interactions between the Earth’s layers from its deepest interior to its surface.
