New research suggests that the surface of Earth's inner core may be changing shape over short periods. Scientists studied earthquake waves and found subtle differences in their patterns, indicating a dynamic outer layer of the inner core.
New research suggests that the surface of Earth's inner core may be shape-shifting. Scientists studied earthquake waves that have skimmed the edge of the inner core, 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) deep. They revealed that, even when the core had rotated into a previously observed position, there were often subtle differences. These differences suggest that the inner core's surface, while solid, could be quite changeable over short periods.
\The outer core is molten metal — mostly iron and nickel. It cushions the solid inner core, which is also mostly iron and nickel. Each year, a tiny bit of the liquid outer core crystallizes and adds to the solid inner core, which is growing at a rate of about a millimeter per year. At this border between the outer and inner core, though, the inner core hovers right at its melting point. It's solid, but not stiff. That may be why it seems to ooze around a bit in the new study, though figuring out the precise dimensions of the shape change is a challenge. 'We sort of expect that the motion could be on the order of hundreds of meters, maybe a kilometer or two,' said Vidale, 'and we don't know how broad. It could be hundreds of kilometers across.' \In an earlier study co-authored by Vidale, he and his collaborators found that the inner core is not rotating at a consistent rate. It rotated faster than the rest of the planet up until about 2010, when it started to slow. It now rotates at a slower rate. From that research, the scientists could figure out when the same spot on the core passed under the same spot on Earth between 1991 and 2023. To measure the core, they used pairs of earthquakes that originated in the same spot in the South Sandwich Islands, in the South Atlantic Ocean, and generated waves that traveled through the core before being picked up by receivers in South and North America. Using 168 pairs of these earthquakes, the researchers saw little change in waves that went through the same spot of the core at different times when those waves traveled into the core's interior. But they did see changes in the same spots in waves that just glanced the surface of the core, elucidating its outermost layer.
EARTH's INNER CORE GEOPHYSICS SEISMOLOGY PLATE TECTONICS VOLCANOES
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