Earth's Core is Mysteriously Slowing Down
Your days might become a bit longer, but nobody knows what else might result
Some 3,000 feet below your feet, something really strange is going on. Earth’s inner core is rotating slower than it used to.
Earth’s core is made of iron and nickel. The inner core—roughly the size of our moon—is solid, but the outer core is liquid.
The entire planet rotates, of course—that’s why the sun rises every day. But new evidence confirms what scientists have been suspecting for some time: The inner core began slowing down around 2010 and is now rotating slower than the planet’s surface.
“When I first saw the seismograms that hinted at this change, I was stumped,” said John Vidale, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California. “But when we found two dozen more observations signaling the same pattern, the result was inescapable. The inner core had slowed down for the first time in many decades. Other scientists have recently argued for similar and different models, but our latest study provides the most convincing resolution.”
It’s thought the churning of the liquid outer core is causing the inner core to slow down, a dynamic that’s also responsible for creating the planet’s protective magnetic field. Nobody knows what the effects might be, other than our days possibly growing longer by perhaps a thousandth of a second, Vidale said in a statement.
The findings, based on seismic data from earthquakes and nuclear tests, were published last week in the journal Nature.