Not solid and hard, it turns out this is the original texture of the Earth’s core

A geophysicist at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Rhett Butler, reveals that there are questions about the numbers being mismatched. Butler is looking at how seismic waves created by large earthquakes at five different locations travel through the Earth’s core to opposite sides of the Earth.

However, something went wrong, the earthquake shear wave that should have passed through the solid metal sphere, was instead deflected into a certain area.

The numbers surprised Butler. He believed the seismic wave math was correct, which he concluded meant only one thing: scientists suspected the structure was wrong. So Butler and his co-authors reevaluated their basic assumption that Earth’s inner core is essentially solid.

They found that the waves they observed worked if, instead of being a solid sphere, the Earth’s core had pockets of soft, semisolid liquid iron near its surface.

The range of iron consistency is striking, according to Butler. “We’ve seen evidence that not only is it not soft everywhere, the Earth’s core is very hard in some parts,” he said. “There’s a hard surface that’s in direct contact with molten or malleable iron. So we’re seeing a lot of detail in the core that we haven’t seen before.”

This research has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the Earth’s magnetic field. Meanwhile, the swirling liquid outer core drives our planet’s magnetic field helping in modifying the field, according to research published in 2019 in the journal Science Advances.

Other planets, such as Mars, have a liquid center but lack an inner core and magnetic field, according to research from NASA. Therefore, Butler and Irving believe that a deeper understanding of this deep will help scientists understand the relationship between the planet’s interior and its magnetic activity.

Author: Anastasia Merlinda

– .