New Research Confirm That Earth’s Core Is Solid But Not That Much

A detailed analysis of seismic waves during earthquakes show that the inner core of our planet is solid. But it is less solid than we expected – it is similar to gold or platinum.

By CharlesC CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], from Wikimedia Commons

Scientists from the Australian National University are convinced that the proof comes from seismic waves called J waves. This type of wave – as far as we know – can only exist in solid matter. Thus the scientists claim the inner core of our planet is solid. But they also found that it is less solid than they thought. If the scientists are correct than the core of the Earth shares its mechanical properties with materials such as gold or platinum.

The method the scientists used is called correlation wavefield method and it uses signals from seismic waves collected by two independent receivers. The researchers focused on seismic waves that were detected 3 – 10 hours after big earthquakes and used the global net for measuring seismic data. They were allowed to analyze data from all pairs of detectors during all earthquakes. This gave them a large amount of data to analyze.

Scientists are planning to use the method in the future as well. For example, we don’t know what the temperature of the inner core is exactly. Or how exactly old it is or how quickly it is hardening. And knowing all of this is actually important as it is heavily tied in with our planets magnetic field.

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