OAN Roy Francis
UPDATED 9:21 AM PT – Tuesday, January 24, 2023
The earth’s core, which is approximately 1,800 miles below the surface of the earth, has seemingly stopped rotating and may now be reversing its rotation.
Earth’s inner core is essentially a solid metal ball about 75 percent of the size of the moon, surrounded by a liquid outer core. The outer core allows the inner core to spin freely and causes the earth’s magnetic fields that protect the surface from harmful UV rays.
Though the inner core cannot be studied directly, deep seismic waves caused by earthquakes are trackable and are able to be translated to give scientists an image of what is happening with the core.
Seismologists at Peking University in Beijing Yi Yang, and Xiaodong Song, analyzed the seismic waves dating back to the 1960s. The two scientists found that the core has seemingly stopped rotating between 2009 and 2020, and could now be reversing direction, they recorded their finding in a study published in Nature Geoscience.
This is not the first time that the core has come to a halt or reversed direction, scientists believe that this process happens every 60 to 70 years. The two seismologists suggest that the last time this occurred was in the late 1960s through the early 1970s.
Although unclear, scientists have noted that the same cycle can be observed in the Earth’s climate system. Global temperatures and sea levels appear to be in connection with the inner core’s cycle, along with the length of the Earth’s day, and its magnetic fields.
The two scientists said they expect the core to now be rotating in a westward direction compared with the surface of the earth in the coming decades.