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A study published Tuesday suggests that Earth has an additional inner core that may tell the tale of a “significant global event from the past.” The highly specialized study published in Nature found that there is a giant metal ball sitting within the Earth’s inner core, known as the innermost inner core (IMIC). The ball is roughly 800 miles, and has been part of geological theory for quite some time, but the results from the study almost conclusively prove its existence (since we can’t get down there and check with our own eyes). The study was conducted by a team...

A new study published in Nature Geoscience by geophysicists Yi Yang and Xiadong Song of Peking University in Beijing explored the nature of movement of Earth’s inner core, largely made up of iron and molten liquids. They found the inner core’s movement recently reduced enough they consider it “paused,” all part of what “seems to be associated with a gradual turning back of the inner core as a part of an approximately seven-decade oscillation.” The last turning point was in the early 1970s. The new study further tracked seismic waves through the core to see how they played out on...

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...

The giant iron ball at the center of the Earth appears to be spinning a bit faster than the rest of the planet. The solid 1,500-mile-wide inner core, which is surrounded by fluid, rotates about one-quarter to one-half degree more than the rest of the world every year, scientists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report in today's issue of the journal Science. The spin of the Earth's core is an important part of the engine that creates the planet's magnetic field, and researcher Xiaodong Song said he believes magnetic interaction is responsible...