The earth would have another core, smaller and made of iron

The Earth has a core in its deepest part, but for some time there has been evidence of the presence of another, even smaller one. A new study provides data suggesting that it would an iron sphere with a radius of approximately 650 kilometers.

The new data, which could improve the understanding of the origin and evolution of the planets, was collected in a study by scientists from the Australian National University, which was published this week by Nature Communications.

The earth is made up of different layers, like a matryoshka doll, and it is in the center 5000 kilometers deep, there is a sphere made almost entirely of iron that forms its inner core with a radius of about 1,220 kilometers.

The presence of another smaller core, a new layer that is even inner, is a hypothesis that has been debated, and a new study provides more evidence.

Dive deep into the interior Earth It’s challenging, and the Australian team used a technique based on measuring the bounce of seismic waves created by earthquakes around the world as they travel through the planet’s interior.

A researcher from the Spanish Institute of Geosciences (IGEO) of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Maurizio Mattesini emphasizes the importance of this research, in which he was not involved, and tells EFE that this new small core inside the inner core, about which very little was known, was it would be “the last piece of matryoshka”.

Scientists Thanh-SonPham and Hvoje Tkalcic are using a rather innovative technique to obtain new information about this still inner small core, such as its radius of 650 kilometers, and have obtained clearer evidence of how this sphere behaves within the second larger than core. the inner core is, he adds.

The study describes that the behavior of the small core when faced with propagating seismic waves is slightly different from what happens in what we know as the inner core.

In this new core, waves that run parallel along the Earth’s axis of rotation they go faster, but if they move in a plane of 50 degrees they slow down.

This behavior – explains Mattesini – is not the same in the outermost part of the solid core. The high-speed axis is kept parallel to the Earth’s axis of rotation, but the slow-speed axis is exactly in the equatorial plane, which is 90 degrees.

Therefore, the so-called “seismic misotropy, which is a peculiar characteristic of the inner core, It was seen that he was changing depending on whether we are looking at the behavior of the new or the old”, adds the scientist.

Hence the hypothesis that over the years there has been a different evolution of the material, he adds. “The inner part is a more consolidated material, which has a different response to seismic waves compared to the outer part,” which is still affected by the phenomenon of convection, the material moves and mixes.

As for the chemical composition of the small core, it is believed to be similar to the largest, basically iron, but it is not known whether it is cubic or hexagonal, which is an important detail. “With this new article, something more seems to be known, but the dispute is still open.”

Mattessi, also a professor of Earth physics at the Complutense University of Madrid, points this out Knowing exactly what is in the center of the Earth, its composition, structure and the way it behaves, allows us to study what its evolution will be like.