Earth’s inner core, a hot iron ball the size of Pluto, has stopped spinning in the same direction as the rest of the planet and might even be rotating the other way, research suggested on Monday.
The inner core of the Earth, located deep in the center and spanning roughly 746 miles, is primarily composed of pure, solid iron. It has been believed to rotate, but a new study suggests that it may have “paused” or even reversed its spin. The outer core, which surrounds the inner core and is made of molten iron and nickel, creates the Earth’s magnetic field through the movement of electrical currents. Seismic waves caused by earthquakes and nuclear weapon tests can be analyzed to study the core, as was done by seismologists Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song in their research published in the Nature Geoscience journal.
Roughly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) below the surface we live on, this “planet within the planet” can spin independently because it floats in the liquid metal outer core
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