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“It’s very exciting – and it could mean we have to rewrite the manuals!”
Most intimate core
In school, you probably learned that our planet is made up of four distinct layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core.
But new research by a team of scientists from the Australian National University (ANU) is turning the game upside down: Like a Russian doll, they say, the inner core has yet another core hidden inside.
This “deepest inner core” may have been caused by a dramatic event early in Earth’s history.
“We have found evidence that could point to a change in the structure of iron, possibly suggesting two distinct cooling events in Earth’s history,” Joanne Stephenson, PhD researcher at ANU, and author principal of a research article published in the Geophysical Research Journal: Solid Earth, said in a statement.
“The details of this great event are still a bit of a mystery, but we have added another piece to the puzzle regarding our knowledge of the Earth’s inner core,” she added.
Pointing crystals
The work is based on an older theory.
“The idea of another separate layer was proposed a few decades ago, but the data is very unclear,” Stephenson argued. “We got around this problem by using a very smart search algorithm to go through thousands of inner core models.”
Previous research indicates that this innermost inner core appears to take half the diameter of the overall inner core and has iron crystals pointing in an east-west direction, as opposed to the outer, inner core, which has the crystals pointing towards the east. north to south, puzzling scientists.
The new research could have important implications.
“It’s very exciting – and it could mean we have to rewrite the textbooks!” Said Stephenson.
READ MORE: Scientists dig deep to reveal Earth’s hidden layer [ANU]
Learn more about the Earth’s core: Earth’s core leaks, baffling scientists
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