A new study of Earth’s inner core used seismic data from repeating earthquakes, called doublets, to find that refracted waves rather than reflected waves change over time – providing the best evidence yet that Earth’s inner core is rotating.
Exhaustive seismic data from repeating earthquakes and new data-processing methods have yielded the best evidence yet that the Earth’s inner core is rotating – revealing a better understanding of the hotly debated processes that control the planet’s magnetic field.
The new study by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Geologists do not fully understand how the Earth’s magnetic field generator works, but suspect it is closely linked to dynamic processes near the inner core-outer core boundary area, the researchers said. Shifts in the location of the magnetic poles, changes in field strength and anomalous seismic data have prompted researchers to take a closer look.
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