Earth's core has stopped and could be changing direction

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The crust, mantle, inner core, and outer cores make up the Earth's layers. The liquid outer core separates the solid inner core from the semi-solid mantle, allowing the inner core to revolve at a pace different from the Earth's rotation. The solid inner core is about 3,200 miles below the Earth's crust and has a Radius of roughly 2,200 miles making it close to the size of Mars. Making up 1/3 of the planet's mass, the core is made up mostly of iron and nickel and is responsible for Earth's magnetic field.

Published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, Yi Yang, an associate research scientist at Peking University, used analysis of seismic waves from earthquakes that have passed through the Earth's inner core along comparable paths since the 1960s to determine how quickly the inner core is spinning.

They claimed what they discovered was unexpected. Seismic records, which had previously changed throughout time, had little changed as of 2009. The claim indicated a stop in the inner core spinning.

Experts said in a study “We show surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back”

The magnetic field produced by the outer core causes the rotation of the inner core, which is counterbalanced by the mantle's gravitational pull. Understanding the rotation of the inner core may help us understand the interactions between these layers and other deep-earth phenomena.

According to Song and Yang's calculations, a slight mismatch between the electromagnetic and gravitational fields might cause the inner core's rotation to pull back or possibly reverse. They think that this cycle, which spans seven decades, had its turning point in the early 1970s, which is when they saw it in their data around 2009/2010.