Earth’s inner core paused, then reversed its spin. This is fine

Seattle Times ^ | January 23, 2023 | Robert George Andrews

[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.

[JackFromTexas]

When you spin an egg, the impetus for the spin is applied ONLY to the shell.
In a cooked egg, the solid interior picks that energy up and quickly carries it throughout the egg.
In a raw egg, the energy is transferred slowly, the viscous interior tends NOT to transfer the change of energy/motion.

For the Earth, the last known ( or reasonably speculated ) application of energy that could effect the spin was a collision between the Earth and a mass that formed the Moon.
It would take that kind of energy applied to the surface and Mantel, then the core. The only cause of change I can see is that the core rotates at a different speed than the rest of the planet, which is possible in my mind, and some one is seeing that difference and calling it a “change of direction.” Much the way a person in a fast car sees the truck going in the same direction at a slower speed, and thinks the truck is going backwards.
If there is anything significant in this issue, it is some ‘scientists’ perception and not significant.

[frank ballenger]

Ha.
Makes one stop and think.

[ridesthemiles]

Geologists claim that the magnetic poles have reversed MANY times.

[ridesthemiles]

That is how you can tell if egg has been already cooked or not.

[Therapsid]

1.5 months ... six days of dark, followed by six more days of dark, takes a month and a half for the Earth to recover chaos earthquakes pretty big mess, best to be in the middle of one of the large continents