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Earth’s inner core paused, then reversed its spin. This is fine
Seattle Times ^ | January 23, 2023 | Robert George Andrews

Posted on 01/23/2023 6:05:57 PM PST by DoodleBob

Imagine Earth’s inner core — the dense center of our planet — as a heavy, metal ballerina. This iron-rich dancer is capable of pirouetting at ever-changing speeds.

That core may be on the cusp of a big shift. Seismologists reported Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience that after brief but peculiar pauses, the inner core changes how it spins — relative to the motion of Earth’s surface — perhaps once every few decades. And, right now, one such reversal may be underway.

This may sound like a setup for a world-wrecking, blockbuster movie. But fret not: Precisely nothing apocalyptic will result from this planetary spin cycle, which may have been happening for eons. The researchers who propose this speculative model instead aim to advance understanding of Earth’s innermost sanctum and its relationship with the rest of the world.

The inner core is like “a planet within a planet, so how it moves is obviously very important,” said Xiaodong Song, a seismologist at Peking University in Beijing and an author of the study.

In 1936, Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann discovered that Earth’s liquid outer core envelops a solid metal marble — and it has bamboozled scientists ever since.

“It’s weird that there’s a solid iron ball kind of floating in the middle of the Earth,” said John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California who was not involved with the study.

Scientists think the core crystallized out of a molten metal soup at some point in Earth’s not-too-distant past, after the planet’s internal inferno had sufficiently cooled.

The inner core cannot be directly sampled, but energetic seismic waves emanating from potent earthquakes and Cold War-era nuclear weapon tests have ventured through the inner core, illuminating some of its properties.

(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; innercore; magnetism; platetectonics; poleshift; reality; science; speculation
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To: moviefan8

Make it Quaker State.


41 posted on 01/23/2023 7:59:00 PM PST by DoodleBob ( Gravity’s waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: tet68

Nobody even knows what’s down there. They know so little it’s actually ridiculous. Everything we know is a lie essentially and most if not all things we’re taught are completely fabricated.


42 posted on 01/23/2023 8:00:10 PM PST by Bulwyf
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
This is why I posted the story.

This is waaaayyy beyond my pay grade.

There MUST be someone on FR who can clarify if this is much ado about nothing or if we don't have to fret April 18 this year.

43 posted on 01/23/2023 8:01:50 PM PST by DoodleBob ( Gravity’s waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: Brookhaven

44 posted on 01/23/2023 8:02:05 PM PST by A Formerly Proud Canadian ( Ceterum autem censeo Justinius True-dope-us esse delendam)
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To: C210N
Paging Hank Johnson.


45 posted on 01/23/2023 8:03:41 PM PST by DoodleBob ( Gravity’s waiting period is about 9.8 m/s²)
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To: eyedigress

Plus the Aussies will have to learn to walk right-side up and we will have to figure out how to walk upside down.


46 posted on 01/23/2023 9:17:27 PM PST by Gil4 (And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, ax and saw)
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To: wgmalabama

You ain’t fooling anybody; you just want to have your surfboard ready for the big wave!


47 posted on 01/23/2023 10:07:09 PM PST by 5th MEB
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To: 5th MEB

1000 mph surfing….LOL


48 posted on 01/23/2023 10:37:46 PM PST by Reynoldo (BurnLootMurder)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

It’s more likely that it has flip over making it appear to spin backwards .🤔


49 posted on 01/23/2023 10:48:41 PM PST by BiteYourSelf ( Earth first, we'll strip mine the other planets later.)
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To: DoodleBob
Earth’s inner core paused, then reversed its spin.

Undoubtedly anthropogenic in nature!

Caused by SUVs!

We obviously must build more windmills!

Regards,

50 posted on 01/23/2023 11:07:03 PM PST by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: jerod

Which one attracts compasses?


51 posted on 01/23/2023 11:15:40 PM PST by ExGeeEye (For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.)
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To: rockrr

It’s the embryo!!!


52 posted on 01/23/2023 11:35:29 PM PST by Jeff Chandler (THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE. THE REVOLUTION IS THE ISSUE.)
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To: All

Not very clear from the link summary, but I don’t think the inner core “reverses its spin” what is probably meant is that the mid-depth liquid realm and the metal inner core have always been spinning at slightly different rates and sometimes the inner core is ahead of the liquid realm, at other times (I presume this era since 2009) it spins a bit slower. But they are probably both spinning at similar rates. Whether they both spin at similar rates to the outer crust (where we live) or not, I don’t know. I’ll try to find out more details about all that. It would not seem very stable for the earth if they were not all three layers spinning at similar rates. Perhaps the differentials are quite small as in meters per day.

As to the theory that the outer crust might at various times suddenly stop spinning, that seems very unlikely to me. The earth’s rate of spin is gradually slowing down. The day if measured in modern time units would have been 21 hours long in the dinosaur era. The earth has slowed its rotation very slightly during human history. This was proved by comparing Sumerian eclipse records to what astronomers had calculated should have occurred at constant spin rates. I think the conclusion was that the earth had rotated through about one tenth of a day more than expected going back to 3500 BC so that solar eclipse paths were falling on regions further west than the calculations. If the differential was one tenth of a day, then the eclipse the astronomers had calculated should have been around Tibet or maybe southern China would have been in Sumeria (ancient Iraq) instead.

(That would assume their calculations of the new moon dates were correct, a similar outcome would occur if let’s say the moon was perfectly aligned with the Sun a tenth of a day later than expected)

These changes are not linear and I’ve read that the earth day shortened slightly in recent years (rather than continuing the longer trend of lengthening out). Maybe that has something to do with the other changes going on inside the crust in the liquid outer core and the solid inner core.

I could imagine faster changes in the length of day from some astronomical event on the order of perhaps many seconds or a few minutes per day but a sudden stop in the earth’s rotation seems to require forces that would be so powerful that in all probability the earth would disintegrate entirely.


53 posted on 01/24/2023 1:51:11 AM PST by Peter ODonnell (If Arizona held the Olympic Games, Usain Bolt would lose to Joe Biden)
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To: Peter ODonnell

So, what I discovered in the literature about the rotation of the inner and outer core is this — they are believed to be rotating faster than the mantle by 0.3 to 0.5 degrees of longitude per year. That means that over about 900 years (360/0.4 = 900) the inner and outer core make one more rotation than the mantle. The research being discussed in the linked article says that those two components are not quite rotating in sync, but does not specify the variations, you would have to imagine they are fairly small in relative terms, and the implication is that they average out the same.

In other words, these are fairly small variations, it’s not as though the mantle is rushing quickly over top of the outer edges of the liquid outer core. A difference in rotation of 0.4 deg per year is the equivalent of 30 miles at the equator and perhaps 20 miles in most parts of the United States. So whatever part of the core is beneath your home today was perhaps twenty miles west of there a year ago (since it rotates faster). That is a lot faster than the movement of “hot spots” in the crust like the one that has been moving through southern Idaho and under Yellowstone National Park in geological times. That hot spot is moving at about 0.01% the speed of the core in relative terms. I don’t have any idea if the two things are related in any way.


54 posted on 01/24/2023 2:07:25 AM PST by Peter ODonnell (If Arizona held the Olympic Games, Usain Bolt would lose to Joe Biden)
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To: Peter ODonnell

Correcting one statement in my previous post, the Yellowstone hot spot is moving a lot slower than I said, the rate of its eastward drift is about 0.0002% of the earth’s core relative to the mantle. The hot spot was north of Great Salt Lake about ten million years ago. It would only take the core about twenty years to move that far (relative to Yellowstone Park).


55 posted on 01/24/2023 2:21:33 AM PST by Peter ODonnell (If Arizona held the Olympic Games, Usain Bolt would lose to Joe Biden)
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To: DoodleBob

It’s a small island which fits his small mind!


56 posted on 01/24/2023 2:29:59 AM PST by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper (Figures )
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To: jerod; SunkenCiv; Red Badger; BenLurkin; Kaslin

Yes, if this change occurred in 2009, that linear pattern would be expected to have changed. Or intensity of the field would have changed.

Then again, this is a press release.


57 posted on 01/24/2023 5:22:17 AM PST by Robert A Cook PE (Method, motive, and opportunity: No morals, shear madness and hatred by those who cheat.)
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To: frank ballenger

One of my favorite sayings:

What if the Hokey Pokey really IS “what it’s all about”?


58 posted on 01/24/2023 6:47:12 AM PST by RatRipper
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To: Robert A Cook PE; 75thOVI; Abathar; agrace; aimhigh; Alice in Wonderland; AnalogReigns; AndrewC; ...
Thanks Robert A Cook PE.



59 posted on 01/24/2023 8:06:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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Selections from the poleshift keyword, sorted (I omitted the Chandler Wobble topics I noticed, check that keyword for those, if interest):

60 posted on 01/24/2023 8:31:46 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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