Scientists accidentally discover Earth’s inner core is less solid than expected

**TL;DR:**

• Researchers from the University of Southern Carolina say they discovered the Earth’s inner core may be much more malleable. The team used seismic waveform data from 121 repeating earthquakes between 1991 and 2024.

• The data led them to believe that the inner core might be moving around a bit, rather than staying completely solid. According to the researchers, the structural change may relate to the innerCore’s slowing and could lead to a better understanding of the planet’s thermal and magnetic fields.

• The change might have “minutely altered the length of a day,” the researchers said. “I’d realize I was staring at evidence the innercore is not solid,” said principal investigator John Vidale.

• “What we ended up discovering is evidence that the near surface of Earth ‘s inner core undergoes structural change,” Vidale said. ‘We didn’t set out to define the physical nature of the core,” he added.

• “We just wanted to find out what it was like to be in the core”.

—

*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically.*

I love that we’re still finding out and updating some fundamental things about the world, the universe, and our place in it.

I recently started listening to Bill Bryson’s “A Brief History of Nearly Everything” and it really puts into perspective how recent some discoveries (and debunkings!) are, and shows just how fluid and adaptable the scientific world is and continues to be. Change, progress, re-examination, a rejection of things we held as truth when presented with new information; these are the fundamentals of growth on an individual and societal level.

Stay curious, folks!

I believe I learned this originally from the documentary “The Core.”