Yi Yang and Xiadong Song, researchers at Peking University, China, have warned that Earth’s inner core has stopped rotating in the same direction as the rest of the planet, and may even be rotating in the opposite direction.
This situation might “influence the length of the days” and the “behavior of the planet’s magnetic field,” the scientists reported, in a study published in the journal “Nature Geoscience.”
As they explained, the rotation of the inner core of the Earth “changes direction every few decades”, which is possible because that iron ball as hot as the surface of the sun, the size of Pluto, and more than 5,000 kilometers below our feet , floats in the liquid outer core and functions almost independently, like a planet within a planet.
Not being able to access the center of the Earth to study it in detail (the maximum depth reached is 12 km), the little that is known regarding the inner core comes from measuring seismic waves, created by earthquakes and, less frequently, by nuclear explosions. , since as these waves pass through the center of the Earth they reveal the internal composition of the nucleus and its speed of rotation.
Song was one of the first to suggest, in 1996, that the inner core may be spinning at a different speed than the Earth’s surface.
One possible explanation is that a struggle is taking place between two great forces: on the one hand, the Earth’s magnetic field, which is created in the liquid outer core and is closely linked to the presence of the Earth’s inner core, causes this turn. On the other hand, this impulse is counteracted by the mantle, whose gravitational field slows down this rotation movement.
Thus, the researchers argue that there are physical links between all the layers of the Earth, from the inner core to the surface, and that this push and pull causes the inner core to rotate back and forth in a cycle of approximately 70 years.
The consequences
If so, since there is some controversy regarding this theory, it seems that these changes would only affect the depths of our planet, but would not have a great impact on our lives. Perhaps subtle alterations in Earth’s magnetic field or in the length of days, which are known to rise and fall by a fraction of a millisecond every six years.
Despite everything, there is some controversy regarding these results and many researchers, unrelated to the Nature Geoscience study, have asked for caution regarding these findings, as there are still many unresolved doubts and data that require a more precise explanation.
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