Posted on 06/14/2024 12:23:25 PM PDT by Red Badger
The rotation of Earth's inner core really has slowed down, a new study has confirmed, opening up questions about what's happening in the center of the planet and how we might be affected.
Led by a team from the University of Southern California (USC), the researchers behind the finding think this change in the core's rotation could change the length of our days – albeit only by a few fractions of a second, so you won't need to reset your watches just yet.
"When I first saw the seismograms that hinted at this change, I was stumped," says Earth scientist John Vidale from USC. "But when we found two dozen more observations signaling the same pattern, the result was inescapable.
"The inner core had slowed down for the first time in many decades. Other scientists have recently argued for similar and different models, but our latest study provides the most convincing resolution."
Seismic waves Researchers tracked seismic wave activity across the globe. (Wang et al., Nature, 2024) The inner core is a super-hot, super-dense ball of iron and nickel that is thought to be about two-thirds the size of the Moon. Located more than 3,000 miles (or just over 4,800 kilometers) below our feet, it's far from an easy object to study, though learning about its features could teach us a lot about our planet's history.
In this study, Vidale and his colleagues analyzed readings from 121 repeating earthquakes recorded between 1991 and 2023 around the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic. They also added in data from several nuclear tests. Each of these events caused significant reverberations through the planet.
Earth layers
Graphic showing the different layers down to Earth's core. (USC)
By charting how those waves speed up, slow down, and interact, researchers can estimate the position and movement of the inner core. Its apparent backtracking in relation to the surface – which seems to have started around 2010 – may be due to the the constant motion of the liquid iron outer core generating Earth's magnetic field, the team suggests, or the pull of gravitational forces.
As for what this means: we don't really know. Changes in speed, reversals, and wobbles in the inner core are not uncommon, so there's no indication that we're going to get the kind of apocalyptic disaster we might see in a sci-fi movie. We might experience slight shifts in days and nights, but only very slight.
"[It would be] very hard to notice, on the order of a thousandth of a second, almost lost in the noise of the churning oceans and atmosphere," says Vidale.
What we can say for sure is that the study adds to our understanding of the mysteries of the geological deep – and the spin of the Earth's inner core is something scientists are going to continue to keep a very close watch on.
"The dance of the inner core might be even more lively than we know so far," says Vidale.
The research has been published in Nature.
Damn You, Donald Trump!
Global warming is messing up the magnetic field. </sarc>
Amazing ….no mention of climate change
Climate change causes almost everything
Global Warming Is Slowing the Earth’s Rotation
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-is-slowing-the-earths-rotation/
Climate change climate change climate change climate change
Spend a few trillion to study it…
Blame it on globull warming.
Women, minorities hardest hit...
Lets see how the climate doomers are going to spin this.
That must be why I feel out of sorts lately. Slow core.
Let me tell you what it means.
Life is slowly going to come to a stop on Earth.
Why?
The magnetic field will decrease, which protects us from solar radiation.
The world was destroyed due to wickedness the first time with water.
The second time will be with fire.
2 Peter 3
This is a simple explanation by the Climate Fools. Global warming increases CO2 in the atmosphere that causes drag on the earths surface with a corresponding decrease in the earth’s spin, that causes the core to slow down also and we all age 1 millisecond longer than our current life. Glad I figured that out. I feel much better now.
I knew this before the report came out. Laying very still in bed at night i could feel a slowing down action. At first I blamed it on gas. I checked my depends in the morning and no deposit so I knew it was something else. I felt a disturbance in the force and knew it must be the earth core slowing down,
Did Algore have anything to do with this?
556mm
SOMEbody left the parking on and tried to drive away.
I KNEW IT!
Sorry for yelling.
I coukd feel it when I spun myself around and around then stopped really fast. Woooo.
That’s a drag.
“SOMEbody left the parking on and tried to drive away.”
Do something break and you forgot to use the word ‘brake’
What? They expected it to speed up? Of course it’s slowing down.
What? They expected it to speed up? Of course it’s slowing down.
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