About 5,000 km below the surface on which we live, the “planet inside the planet” rotates independently because it floats in the outer liquid metal core. How exactly the inner core rotates – is a topic that has come up many times among scientists and the latest research published on the subject is expected to be Controversial.
The little we know about the inner core, comes from analyzing the speed of seismic waves in the core created by earthquakes or nuclear explosions – when they pass through the middle of the Earth. In search of inner core motion, a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience analyzed seismic waves from recurring earthquakes over the past six decades.
The authors of the study, Xiaodong Song and Yi Yang of Peking University in China, claimed that they discovered that the Earth’s inner core “came to a near complete stop around 2009 and then started rotating in the opposite direction.” They told AFP: “We believe that the inner core rotates, relative to the Earth’s surface, back and forth like a seesaw. One cycle of the seesaw is about seven decades, meaning that the core changes direction about every 35 years.”
The two also claimed that the core had previously changed its direction in the early 1970s and predicted that the next change of direction would begin in the mid-1940s. The researchers also explained that “the change in direction is consistent with small changes in the exact time it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis.”
It is possible that the Earth’s core has started to rotate in the opposite direction (Photo: Genesis)