Earth’s solid inner core can change its direction of rotation every 60-70 years. About informs TASS.
Earth consists of three main layers – crust, basalt mantle and metallic core. Each of these elements is further divided into layers, in particular, they distinguish a liquid outer core about 2000 kilometers thick and a solid inner core with a radius of 1200 kilometers. Despite the high temperature, it will remain solid due to the enormous pressure and will also rotate relative to the other layers. In different geological epochs, the speed of this rotation varied, affecting many parameters, including the length of the day and the strength of the magnetic field.
Song Xiaodong of Peking University and colleagues conducted research and found that the direction and speed of rotation can change every 60-70 years. This has been demonstrated by data from many seismic stations from Alaska to Kazakhstan and Indonesia to the Kuriles. Data on reflected waves that appeared during the nuclear tests of the 20th century are especially valuable – due to their enormous power, the oscillations reached the very center of the Earth.
A subsequent comparison of these waves showed that both the direction of motion and rotational speed of the Earth’s inner core changed cyclically, and that its rotation had almost completely stopped several times in the past seventy years compared to rocks of the liquid outer core. surrounding it. According to Professor Song Xiaodong and colleagues, the last similar event occurred in the late 2000s and the penultimate event in the late 1960s.
These cyclical changes coincide almost perfectly with some climatic fluctuations, as well as shifts in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field and the length of the day recorded in recent decades, according to the scientists. In the future, geologists hope to find out exactly what causes such fluctuations.
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Source: Gazeta
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