Earth’s core isn’t reversing direction

A 2003 movie titled The Core depicted a state of affairs during which disasters occurred throughout the Earth as a result of the planet’s core stopped spinning. Could this now be occurring in actual life?

Some individuals are claiming a latest examine suggests we’re about to seek out out. Viral tweets say a “new study claims Earth’s core has stopped and may be reversing in direction” and “Earth’s spinning inner core recently paused then flipped its direction.”

One VERIFY reader texted us to ask: “Has the inner core of Earth reversed its direction recently? How does that affect us? What happens next?”

Did a latest examine discover the Earth’s inside core reversed direction?

No, a latest examine didn’t discover the Earth’s inside core reversed direction.

A examine didn’t discover the Earth’s core stopped spinning or reversed direction. Instead, the examine suggests the Earth’s inside core — which spins independently of the remainder of Earth — slowed down, and the core slows down after which hastens on an everyday cycle. 

The Earth’s inside core is a ball of cast-iron about as hot as the surface of the sun. It’s surrounded by a layer of liquid steel known as the outer core, the National Center for Families Learning says. This layer of liquid steel separates the inside core from the remainder of the planet, making it doable for the core to rotate at a distinct velocity than the floor, Science Magazine and Nature, the writer of the examine, says.

In the examine, published in Nature Geoscience on Jan. 23, 2023, two scientists from Peking University in China used previous earthquake information to seek out the Earth’s inside core was rotating sooner than the Earth’s floor, however has since slowed to the purpose of matching the floor’s rotation velocity. They imagine that the core will now start to rotate slower than the floor, and that the core’s rotation velocity modifications on a 70-year cycle.

According to the scientists, the inside core rotates sooner than the Earth’s floor for about half the cycle, and slower through the different half. While the inside core is transitioning between its sooner and slower phases, the inside core rotates at about the identical velocity as the remainder of the Earth.

The core “pausing” or “turning back,” phrases used within the examine’s summary, refers back to the core’s place relative to some extent on the floor, which is continually rotating. The authors of the examine issued an update on Jan. 31 to make clear this. 

“Some language in this article has been updated to more precisely describe the inner-core rotation discussed in this study as differential inner-core rotation, the difference in rotation between the inner core and the mantle,” the authors of the examine wrote.

If you stand on a dot on the Earth’s floor, and you set a spot on the inside core straight beneath you, the spot will stay straight beneath you so long as the floor and the core rotate on the similar velocity. If the core rotates sooner than the floor, the spot will transfer forward of you, and if the core rotates slower than the floor, the spot will fall behind you. To you, it should appear to be the spot “reversed direction” though it is nonetheless rotating the identical method, simply slower.

So why is that this vital? Scientists imagine the change within the inside core’s velocity might clarify modifications to the Earth’s magnetic subject, trigger the long-term motion of the magnetic poles or contribute to minor variations within the size of a day.

But all of those are simply assumptions in regards to the conduct of the inside core, one of some explanations scientists imagine are the almost definitely for describing the inside core’s conduct.

Since they will’t see the core, Smithsonian Magazine explains, scientists use seismic waves from earthquakes to study it. That was how Earth’s stable inside core was found in 1936. Scientists have since used related strategies to construct and refine descriptions of the inside core’s conduct.

The first examine with evidence the core might rotate differently from the floor got here in 1996, when two geophysicists at Columbia University, Xiaodong Song, who co-authored the 2023 examine, and Paul Richards, used seismic wave information to counsel the inside core rotates a lot sooner than the remainder of the Earth. Since then, different research have concluded the core rotates at speeds that differ from the primary examine’s findings, the core isn’t rotating independently from the floor in any respect and simply final yr, the inside core modifications velocity on a six-year cycle.

Scientists want extra information to determine issues out with extra certainty. And Nature says that requires merely ready for extra earthquakes.

“[A] long history of continuous recording of seismic data is critical for monitoring the motion of the heart of the planet,” Song and Yi Yang, the examine’s co-author, informed Nature.