Earth's Inner Core Might Be on the Move

[defendandprotect]

Earth's Inner Core Might Be on the Move

Lynne Peeples
OurAmazingPlanet Contributor
LiveScience.com Lynne Peeples
ouramazingplanet Contributor
livescience.com – 1 hr 58 mins ago


Earth's solid inner core may be continually inching eastward relative to its liquid outer core, renewing itself by shedding its front while solidifying its back, a team of French scientists suggests.

"Within less than 100 million years, everything that has been crystallized on the west will have melted on the east," said lead researcher Thierry Alboussiere of Universite Joseph Fourier in Grenoble.

The idea counters traditional theory that the big ball at the center of the Earth stands still, growing uniformly in all directions as the planet cools. It could shed light on the nature of the core - such as its age, apparent seismic mismatches, and a mysterious coating of dense fluid on its surface.

Seismic clues

About a billion years ago, the middle of the Earth began slowly solidifying from the inside out. The planet is hottest at its center, possibly even hotter than the surface of the sun, yet the core's iron is thought to be solid because of the extreme pressure that has raised its melting temperature. As it freezes, according to theory, the inner core takes in more iron, sending lighter elements up through the liquid outer core. This movement is thought to drive Earth's magnetic field.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100804/sc_livescience/earthsinnercoremightbeonthemove


------------


Last polar shift 84,000 years ago?

Or was it 780,000 years ago -- ?

[damntexdem]

1. Ooh, 2012, here we come!

;-)

[rucky]

2. Give or take a few million years.

[wildflower]

3. Personally, I think Obama is behind this n/t

[defendandprotect]

4. kick

[DavidDvorkin]

5. We can fix this by sending down a special drilling capsule

that was designed for something else, crewed by a racially diverse mix of men and women, that will plant a nuclear bomb in exactly the right place.

Well, that's the SyFy Channel Saturday night movie solution, anyway.