One of the unsolvable questions about Earth is finally solved. Scientists have found out that Earth's inner core is very solid because it is not stagnant. It is always moving and reshuffling and that stops it from melting.
The scientists found out that the iron crystal atoms at the core are continuously rearranging themselves. Mail Online has stated that this atomic reprocess is stopping the core from liquefying. Though the inner core of Earth is surrounded by liquid hot iron, the crystallized iron is very solid. It is nearly as big as Earth's moon and its pressure is 3.5 million times higher than the pressure at the surface. Its temperature is at 6,000°C.
The iron crystals are supposed to be liquid but since they are always moving like a 'deck of cards', they always go to the previous place of another iron crystal. Even though there is extreme heat and very high pressure at Earth's inner core, it is what made the whole structure solid.
KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden was the one who successfully thought of and solve the mystery with their theory. According to Science Daily, there was a study in 2014 that suggested the same reason as to why Earth's inner core is solid. However, it was debunked because some scientists argue that body-centered cubic or BCCs would be unsteady under such conditions. The scientists at KTH used a larger computational sample than the 2014 research, said Anatoly Belonoshko, a researcher in the Department of Physics at KTH.
They proved that Earth's inner core is indeed in the BCC phase using just that. They also found out that Earth's inner core is made up of 97% of iron with a little bit of nickel and some light elements. Their research was recently published in Nature Geosciences. The result they produced is because of laborious computer simulations performed using Triolith, one of Sweden's largest supercomputers.
