Researchers from the University of California have carried out a study, the results of which have been recently published in the prestigious scientific journal ‘Nature Geoscience’. For reasons unknown to date, the core of the Earth found in Brazil is growing faster than the one at the other end, under the Indonesian Sea . It is not a new behavior, but it has been this way since, more than 500 million years ago, it began to freeze from molten iron.
To carry out the research, the scientists have developed a complex computer model to analyze in detail the rate of crystal growth in the inner core. The model has been able to describe the way in which asymmetric growth can give preference to iron crystals on the axis of rotation with less alignment on the east side than on the west. This would explain the difference in speed.
What is the cause of the “unusual” growth of the Earth’s core?
Seismologists believe that there could be something in the Earth’s core below Indonesia that is shedding heat faster than in Brazil. It is the only logical explanation that they have found for this phenomenon. Faster cooling on one side than the other would increase the rate at which iron crystallizes and accelerate the growth of the Earth’s core.
Now, in the long term this could have very serious implications for the Earth’s magnetic field . Experts explain that the release of heat in the inner core is what today drives the dynamo that generates the magnetic field and that protects living beings from the dangerous particles of the sun’s rays.
They estimate that the inner core is between 500 and 1.5 billion years old , which could be very useful in the debate that exists about how the Earth’s magnetic field formed before the inner core existed.
Barbara Romanowicz, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Berkeley and director emeritus of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory (BSL), points out that the origin of the magnetic field dates back 3,000 years .
