TOKYO: Geophysicists from the US and China claim that the innermost solid core of the Earth is turned on its side, compared to its outer reaches.
The research provides new clues about how the solid inner core formed and began to freeze. Sitting in a shell of molten iron alloy, the inner core grows at about half a millimetre a year. Probing deeper into the solid inner core is like tracing back in time, to the beginnings of its formation.
The problem is that this is the part of Earth that is farthest away from us. It can get hidden behind the complications of all the rest of the Earth that seismic waves have to pass through on their journey to the core and back. Decoding what is going on in the centre of the Earth is one of the most challenging problems in geophysics.
Despite this, Earth’s magnetic field and the existence of the core may have been essential to the development of life on Earth. The core’s magnetic field acts like a shield to the magnetic storms that the sun continually throws at us.
