The Earth's core can change its shape and turn everything on the planet upside down: what is known about it

The Earth's inner core may be at an angle to the mantle. This factor could eventually lead to changes in the shape of the liquid core and cataclysms on the planet's surface.

This is stated in a new study published in the journal Nature Communications. The scientists' discovery may change our understanding of the Earth's internal structure and how seismic activity and the magnetic field affect the behavior of the core.

In 2019, scientists published an article in Geophysical Research Letters stating that strange fluctuations were found deep below the Earth's surface, which occur approximately every 8.5 years.

Now, in a new study, scientists have conducted minute-by-minute mapping of changes in the Earth's rotation and found an explanation for these oscillations. It turns out that the inner core of our planet may actually be at an angle to the mantle.

Based on this, they assumed that the inner core is denser and heavier in the northwestern hemisphere, resulting in a 0.17 degree tilt away from the planet's mantle.

Traditionally, it was believed that the density of the core and mantle were the same, and therefore the Earth's core rotates around the same axis as the mantle.

However, according to Hao Ding, Dean of the Faculty of Geophysics at Wuhan University in China, co-author of the study, the results of natural fluctuations of the Earth indicate that the density structure of the Earth's interior is very heterogeneous.

As Futurism writes, the new data casts doubt on the traditional theory of how the Earth's individual layers move. This is especially true where the inner core meets the surrounding layers. There, according to scientists, there is a change in density, which leads to fluctuations in the Earth's core.

Ding emphasized that this is not just a study that is interesting only to the scientists themselves, as the discovered factor may affect the life of the entire planet in the future. According to him, the tilt between the inner core and the mantle may eventually lead to the liquid Earth's core changing its shape. This will result in a change in the movement of the liquid, and, accordingly, the geomagnetic field.

However, the researchers urge not to draw premature conclusions, as the team is only scratching the surface in their work, and much more research needs to be done to understand exactly what is happening deep below the Earth's surface.

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