A group of Chinese researchers confirmed that the Earth’s inner core changed its rotation axis, after analyzing the movement of seismic waves.
In a study published in the journalNature GeoscienceOn Monday, the researchers pointed out that the change in the rotation of the Earth’s inner core would shorten the length of the days by a fraction of a second throughout the year, and that this would also contribute to the effect, slightly, on the Earth’s magnetic field, according to the newspaper.Wall Street Journal“.
The Earth’s inner core consists of iron and nickel, and it is separated from the solid part of the Earth by a liquid outer layer, which helps to change its movement differently from the entire planet.
“Theoretically, this has been going on for a long time, but we’ve only had evidence of this for decades,” said study co-author and seismologist Xiadong Song, an expert in seismology from the University of Peking.
Song noted that the rotation of the Earth’s inner core is caused by the magnetic field generated by the outer liquid layer, and studying its rotation movement can help scientists understand how the different layers of the Earth interact with each other.
Song, and an expert assistant researcher also from the Chinese University of Peking, Yi Yang, examined the seismic waves caused by earthquakes and compared them with similar tremors in the 1960s, and discovered that the rotation of the Earth’s inner core stopped between 2009 and 2020, and it was likely that it had reversed the direction of its rotation.
“We have these earthquakes occurring in the same locations,” Yang said. “We were making the Earth look like a tomogram.”
But a professor from the University of Southern California, John Vidal, who was not involved in the new study, believes that there may be another analysis of the data provided by the researchers.
He added, in his interview with the American newspaper, that “the changes that the researchers noticed are credible, but the exact reason for what is actually happening is not clear.”
He stressed that the researchers’ analysis “is very good and their theory mentioned in the study is good compared to what is currently available, but there are other ideas that may compete with it.”
Vidal stated that other scientists believe that the changes in the rotation of the Earth’s inner core are shorter than the seventy years that the study focused on, while theories developed by other scientists indicate that the inner core stopped moving between 2001 and 2003, or that its rotation movement was never reversed. Her movement changed.