It’s official: the Earth’s inner core is indeed slowing down, and has been for several years. Will this change have repercussions on your life? Answer.
For years, scientists have suspected that the Earth’s inner core is slowing down, but this has never been proven until today. According to a study published in the journal Nature, researchers say that the speed of the nucleus changes.
According to their results, the Earth’s core appears to follow 70-year cycles. Since 2010, its speed seems to slow down. As a reminder, the Earth’s core is composed of iron and nickel and is surrounded by an outer core, located more than 2,900 kilometers deep. These two nuclei have a fundamental role for our survival and guarantee life on Earth. In fact, they produce turbulence which is at the origin of the earth’s magnetic field, this protective layer which prevents radiation and solar particles from reaching us.
The Earth’s core slows down
To achieve these results, the researchers sent seismic waves through the ground to the inner core. According to previous studies, this nucleus has the ability to rotate on itself. It would rotate in the same direction as our planet, but more quickly, until its speed decreased in recent years. At the moment, we do not yet know the exact cause of this change in speed.
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” When I first saw the seismograms that hinted at this change, I was perplexedexplained John Vidale, professor of earth sciences at USC Dornsife (College of Letters, Arts and Sciences), to the Issues site. But when we discovered two dozen additional observations reporting the same pattern, the result was inevitable. The inner core had slowed down for the first time in decades. Other scientists have recently argued for similar and different models, but our latest study provides the most compelling resolution.“
What consequences?
So what will be the consequences of this upheaval in our daily lives? According to scientists, there is no need to worry. This change in speed of the Earth’s core will not impact our lives. We will not notice this change because, according to John Vidale, “it is very difficult to notice“. It is “of the order of a thousandth of a second, almost lost in the noise of the oceans and the atmosphere“, specifies the person concerned.
According to the results of the study, this phenomenon is entirely natural and will not have any consequences on our lives. Only a change of a few thousandths of a second in the day could be observed, which will be imperceptible to humans.
