SULTEN METRO-New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience analyzes seismic waves from earthquake earth repeated over the last six decades.
Research says that the Earth’s solid inner core, a ball of hot iron has stopped stopping its spin and started spinning in the opposite direction.
Earth’s core is roughly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) below the surface where we live, this “planet within a planet” can rotate independently as it floats in a liquid metal outer core, said the AFP report.
Exactly how the inner core rotates has been the subject of debate among the scientist and recent research is expected to prove controversial.
What little we know about the inner core comes from measuring tiny differences in seismic waves, which are created by earthquake earth or sometimes nuclear explosions, as they pass through the center of the Earth.
Seeking to track the movement of the inner core, new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience analyzes seismic waves from earthquake repeated over the last six decades.
Writer Education of these, Xiaodong Song and Yi Yang of China’s Peking University, said they found that inner core rotation “nearly stopped around 2009 and then reversed in the opposite direction”.
“We believe the inner core rotates, relative to the Earth’s surface, back and forth, like a sway,” they told AFP.
One swing cycle is about seven decades”, meaning the direction changes roughly every 35 years, they added.
