Science & Technology

Earth's inner core has its own inner core

By T.K. Randall
February 10, 2015 ·  24 comments

There is still much to learn about the inside of the Earth. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 NikoLang Despite being situated directly beneath our feet, there is still a great deal that we don't know about the inside of the Earth.

Its interior structure is thought to be composed of the crust, the mantle, the outer core and inner core. Jules Verne's famous novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth" portrayed the inside of the planet as a huge cavern containing a vast ocean, however in reality the inner core is a solid ball of metal - a hellish place where the temperatures are the same as those on the surface of the sun.Now scientists from the US and China have added a whole new chapter to our understanding of the planet's interior by revealing that the inner core actually contains an even smaller inner core of its own which is made up of a different type of iron crystals than those in the inner core's outer shell.

"The fact that we have two regions that are distinctly different may tell us something about how the inner core has been evolving," said Professor Xiadong Song from the University of Illinois.

"It may tell us about how our planet formed, its history, and other dynamic processes of the Earth."

Source: Washington Post | Comments (24)

Tags: Earth.Core