The Earth’s inner core, represented by a solid metallic sphere, appears to change shape and slow down.
Scientists started talking about this phenomenon 15 years ago.
According to the website sciencenews.org, currently, humanity does not have instruments that can physically penetrate the core of the planet to find out “directly” what is happening there. Researchers are forced to rely exclusively on indirect data.
In 2023, Chinese scientists made their findings public: Earth’s inner core has stopped rotating. If until 2009 it was rotating in the same direction as the rest of the planet, then it slowed down and, for unknown reasons, began to move in the opposite direction.
American geophysicists from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles analyzed about 200 pairs of earthquakes produced between 1991 and 2024. These data allowed not only to identify the slowdown of the Earth’s core, but also to conclude that its outer layer is deforming.
The transformations take place partially, experts say, but some changes affect the entire external structure of the nucleus. These changes could be caused by the gravitational pull of the mantle, the Earth’s innermost layer. Another possible explanation would be the movement of material from the outer core.
What does the future hold for us? With a high probability, earthquakes will occur in certain regions of the planet and new mountain ranges will form. However, this process will not be sudden, but will unfold over years or even decades.
