The Earth’s core may be altering form however one main query stays

Scientists have suggest both the size and speed of the Earth’s core might have changed over the last 15 years – but the question remains, will how this effect the planet’s surface?

Recent analysis of the Earth’s core suggests that over the last 15 years centre of our planet has begun to not only slow down but also change shape.

American Geophysicist John Emilio Vidale, from the University of Southern California, suggested these findings at the American Geophysical Union as scientists attempted resolve the long-standing debate on what was happening inside Earth’s core.

Due to no instruments existing capable of probing Earth’s inner layer, scientists used earthquakes that occur on the South Sandwich Island, near Antarctica which repose on the opposite side of the planet to instrument arrays in Alaska.

Earthquake waves travel through the planet like sonar waves through water and some pass through the inner core on their way to Alaska.

Instruments in Alaska record the waves’ signatures called waveforms which contain information about what the waves encountered in their journey through the earth.

In 2023, geophysicists reported waveform differences stemmed from the inner core either having stopped moving or its movement being reversed.

In Vidale’s study analysing 200 pairs of earthquakes from 1991 to 2024 research team came to the conclusion: “The simplest explanation is the deformation to the shape of the inner core”

Vidale highlights patches of the Earth’s inner core such as swelling or contracting would explain the phenomenon. This is not the first instance where researchers have reported the inner core’s surface has changed over time.

In 2006 geophysicists, Lianxing Wen of Stony Brook University, New York, reported that patches of the earth’s core may rise or subside by hundreds of meters per decade, possibly due to material exiting the inner core as it cools down.

However, where this report differs from Vidale is that it affirms that the inner core does not rotate any differently from Earth – Vidale, on the other hand, suggests that the rotation of the Earth’s core has slowed.

The big question is how will all of this affect life on Earth? On that question Vidale says, “We don’t know how this is going to affect anything on the surface,” he adds, “but we can’t say for sure until we figure out what’s happening.”