Originally published September 14 2005
Scientists discover that Earth's surface is rotating slower than its core
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered that the Earth's core rotates faster than the surface by about 0.3 to 0.5 degrees per year, and Xinhua.net reports that this finding could quell debunking theories from seismologists.
Scientists reported on Thursday that Earth's core rotates faster than its surface by about 0.3 to 0.
The claim that Earth's inner core was getting ahead of itself seemed odd at first.
But some computer simulations showed the molten-iron outer core dragging the inner core around by the magnetic field generated in the outer core.
Analysis of nearly identical earthquakes that happened years apart proves Earth's iron core rotates faster than the rest of the planet.
Now the researchers found persuasive evidence that the inner core really is spinning faster than the rest of the planet.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," said Xiaodong Song, a professor of geology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-author of a paper to appear in the Aug. 26 issue of the journal Science.
Earth's iron core consists of a solid inner core about 2,400 kmin diameter and a fluid outer core about 7,000 km in diameter.
The inner core plays an important role in the geodynamics that generates Earth's magnetic field, and an electromagnetic torque from the geodynamics is thought to drive the inner core to rotate relative to the mantle and crust.
The first observational evidence for differential rotation was presented in 1996.
For the past nine years, some seismologists have suspected that flaws, or artifacts, in the data were responsible for the purported movement.
But by comparing historical seismic waves traversing Earth's fluid and solid cores, the researchers found compelling evidence for differential rotation of the solid inner core.
They reported observations of 17 sets of similar seismic waves,which are called waveform doublets, from earthquakes occurring in the South Sandwich Islands region off the coast of South America.
The doublets, which were recorded at up to 58 seismic stations in and near Alaska with a time separation of up to 35 years, allowed the researchers to detect temporal changes along the sampling paths.
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