The inner core at the center of the Earth, a ball of iron and nickel about 1,500 miles wide, may not be perfectly solid.
A new study finds evidence that the inner core’s outer boundary has noticeably changed shape over the past few decades.
“The most likely thing is the outer core is kind of tugging on the inner core and making it move a little bit,” said John Vidale, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California.
Dr. Vidale and his colleagues reported their findings on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
That adds to the mysteries about the planet’s center. Geophysicists have previously reported that the inner core does not spin at exactly the same rate as the rest of Earth. They also showed that the pace of rotation changes — the inner core appeared to be spinning slightly faster than the outer layers a couple of decades ago, and now it is spinning slightly slower.
The inner core is the deepest of Earth’s geological layers. The crust — the layer that we live on — is just a few miles thick. Below that, filling up 84 percent of the planet, is the 1,800-mile-thick mantle, which is soft enough in places to flow up and down and generate the forces that push the continents around. Between the mantle and the inner core is the liquid outer core.
Scientists of course cannot cut into Earth and directly observe its insides. Instead, their knowledge is inferred from the vibrations generated by earthquakes that pass through the planet. The speed and the direction of the seismic vibrations change depending on the density and the elasticity of the rocks.
