Scientists in the Heart of the Earth: “We’re Finding a New World”

For more than half a century the scientific community has believed that the center of the Earth was solid, compressed iron surrounded by a liquid outer core. However, with the passing of the years and scientific progress, new things have been learned about this planet.

In fact, recent research by the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Science and Japan’s Marine Geosciences and Technology Agency has found that the hardness of the Earth’s core varies from a hard metal to a semi-soft and liquid.

According to the ‘Live Science’ portal, one of the researchers, Rhett Butler, explained that the discovery began after they realized that seismic waves generated by strong earthquakes travel through the Earth’s core to the other side of the globe, but others did not. Through the “metal ball” but veered.

This discrepancy made the world worry about data matching. “When you are in this business, you have to match the data,” he told the aforementioned outlet.

Thus, the expert and his team reevaluated their idea that the Earth’s inner core was solid in its entirety, to determine that the core contains pockets of liquid and soft iron near its surface.

“We’re looking at a lot of details inside the inner core that we haven’t seen before,” Butler said.

The researcher concluded that the conclusion they reached is that the center of the planet: “has hard surfaces against cast iron or soft iron. So we see many details inside the inner core that we have not seen before.”

According to seismologist Jessica Irving, who was not involved in the research, this type of study allows us to learn more about Earth, and the more we analyze its core, “the more we realize that it’s not a boring drop of iron (…) we’re finding an entirely new hidden world” , explained in an interview on this topic with the specialized portal Live Science.

It should be made clear that geophysicists rely on data from Earth’s seismic waves, which are caused by earthquakes, to reconstruct a picture of the inner workings of the planet.

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