Earth's Core Over the Past 1 Billion Years: Study Shows Unexplainable Scientific Phenomenon

Thousands of kilometers beneath the ground, a scientific phenomenon involving the Earth's core occurs and according to experts, it is an occurrence no one can explain.

This inner core of Earth, described by KSU Sentinel, as a compact mass of nickel and iron, is growing more rapidly on one side compared to the other.

A study conducted by the Berkeley, USA-based University of California seismologists found that the core area, which is a site underneath the Banda Sea in Indonesia, is larger than the portion which is underneath the other extreme Brazil.

Through the use of computer simulations, experts have developed a kind of map that exhibits the growth of the Earth's core, over the last one billion years.

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The behavior of the Earth's Core

As a result, the seismologists concluded that the core behaved in an uneven pattern, with new iron crystals that formed more rapidly on its Asian side.

In a statement, Daniel Frost, one of the scientists who took part in the study said, the west side appears different from the east side to the center, not only at the top of the inner core as some studies have proposed.

The only way to explain such an occurrence, added Frost, is that one side is growing faster compared to the other.

According to experts, such a phenomenon has an effect on the magnetic field of Earth, which protects humans from the sun's hazardous particles. Since the magnetic field is developed by convention in the external core, driven by the inner core's dissipation.

Inner and Outer Core of Earth

Essentially, the Earth's interior, as described by the US Geological Survey, comprises layers that are akin to those of an onion. The deepest, the last of them, is the massive inner core of nickel and iron, which is 1,200 kilometers in radius, about three-quarters the moon's size.

In a similar report, National Geographic said, it is surrounded by a liquid external core made of nickel and cast iron, approximately 2,400 kilometers thick. This external core is in turn, surrounded by a 2,900 kilometers thick rock hot mantle, and covered by a thin, cold rock crust on the surface.

Experts, by examining seismic waves, as explained in the Michigan Tech site, analyze how these layers are behaving, although they have been discovering for years, that the waves are not spreading in a similar direction as they circulate between the poles, as well as in the equatorial zone.

Such an assumption was the basis for understanding that there might be some variance in the Earth's core that is accountable for such a phenomenon.

Frost also explained, the liquid iron's movement in the external core is removing heat from the inner core and freezes it. Meaning, the external core received more heat from the east side compared to the west, added the expert.

Determining the Earth's Core's Age

Calculating simulations also made it possible for seismologists to identify a more exact date for the formation of the core of Earth.

More so, the core is known to have formed when this planet was already organized, seemingly from metal concentrations like nickel and iron.

According to Barbara Romanowicz, another researcher who took part in the study, they have set very flexible limits for the inner core's age between 500 and 1.5 billion years, which could help in the argument about how the magnetic field was developed before the solid inner core existed.

He explained, they know the magnetic field existed three billion years back, and thus, other processes need to have "driven convection in the outer core back then."

This study specified the inner core's younger age could mean that the heat that boiled the liquid core at the beginning of the history of Earth came from light elements separating from the iron, instead of that particular metal's crystallization.

Related information is shown on Rebecca Lloyd's YouTube video below: