Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

The inner core of the Earth gradually slows down its rotation and moves slower than the earth's surface, Azernews reports.

This is the conclusion reached by American and Chinese scientists at the University of Southern California.

"The movement of the Earth's inner core has been discussed by the scientific community for two decades, with some studies even showing that the inner core rotates faster than the earth's surface. However, new data from the University of Southern California irrefutably indicate that around 2010, the rotation speed of the inner core slowed down and began to lag behind the speed of the Earth's surface," says a publication on the university's website.
"I was greatly puzzled by the first seismograms hinting at this. But then a couple dozen more observations indicating the same thing left no doubt: the inner core slowed down for the first time in many decades. Recently, scientists have been arguing about this this way and that, but our latest study puts an end to this dispute," said John Vidal, professor at the Faculty of Earth Sciences.

According to Professor Vidal, the slowdown in the rotation of the Earth's core is caused by some stirring of the surrounding liquid mantle, which creates the Earth's magnetic field, as well as the gravitational influence of the upper layers of the solid mantle.

What the consequences of this slowdown may be, scientists have not yet decided to judge. According to Professor Vidal, this can change the length of the day by an almost imperceptible amount, on the order of a thousandth of a second. Nevertheless, scientists intend to carefully monitor the process.

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