Otherwise, the wave signal won’t pass directly through the heart of the core. To do this with the innermost inner core requires a strong earthquake that occurs on one side of the planet and seismic instruments to pick up the waves on exactly the opposite side. By analyzing how waves change as they travel through the planet, researchers can learn the properties of the materials they passed through. The only way to peer deep into Earth’s interior is to use earthquake waves like a scanner. “I think it is an unnecessary splitting into multiple layers,” Frost says. But, he says, the results could be linked to a gradual change within the core rather than an abrupt and distinct transition. The change in the waves’ behavior is likely accurate and meshes with previous research, says Dan Frost, a seismologist at the University of South Carolina, who was not involved in the study.

Not all seismologists agree that the observations are proof of a distinct innermost inner core, however. “We strengthen existing evidence for the existence of the innermost inner core, which should be a ball the size of about half of the inner core.” The latter spans just more than 2,400 kilometers in diameter. “This is a new way to sample the innermost inner core,” says study co-author Thành Sơn Phạm, a postdoctoral researcher in seismology at the Australian National University (ANU). In research published on February 21 in the journal Nature Communications, seismologists peered into the inner core using a new method that tracks the echoes from earthquakes, discovering a change in the way the waves travel in the about 1,300-kilometer (808-mile) diameter of the innermost core. Only a few usable earthquake waves have been detected passing through the innermost part of this inner core, however, so scientists have very few data points with which to study that area’s composition. If so, this so-called innermost inner core may record an early phase in Earth’s evolution.Įarth scientists have long observed that seismic waves from earthquakes move differently through the heart of the inner core than they do through its upper layers, indicating some sort of change in texture. But that ball may not be as simple as it seems: new research suggests the inner core contains its own inner core. Earth’s core consists of a solid iron-nickel ball rotating within a layer of liquid metal.

Que es el nucleo interno