Has The Earth’s Core Stopped Spinning? What Could That Mean For Earth?

Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song; two Chinese scientists made the surprising discovery that the Earth’s core had stopped spinning. 

Getty

The Peking University researchers discovered that the rotation had all but ceased in the past decade and that it may be gearing up to reverse direction. 

Getty

According to them, it may be “experiencing a turning-back in a multidecadal oscillation, with another turning point in the early 1970s”

Song, a seismologist, deduced that this may be part of an oscillation cycle that lasts around 7 decades.

Getty

He further added that the core was “a planet within a planet, so how it moves is obviously very important”.

Getty

While this discovery is exciting, there is still very little that we know about the Earth’s core. We know that it is made of solid iron and burns at a temperature of 9,392° F.

Getty

“There are two major forces acting on the inner core,” said the researchers. These are the electromagnetic force and gravitational force.”

Getty

The magnetic field protects the planet from radiation. “The other is gravity force. The mantle and inner core are both highly heterogeneous, so the gravity between their structures tends to drag the inner core to the position of gravitational equilibrium, so, called gravitational coupling.”

Getty

Since the two work in a push and pull relationship, they cause the inner core to spin in a “70 year oscillation”.

They further added, “We hope that our research motivates researchers to design and test models treating the Earth as an integrated dynamic system.”

Getty