A study of Earth’s deep interior, based on the behavior of seismic waves from earthquakes, confirmed the existence of a distinct structure inside our planet’s inner core — a wickedly hot solid ball of iron and nickel about 800 miles wide, researchers say.
In Jules Verne’s classic 1864 novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” adventurers descend through an Icelandicinto a vast underground world populated by prehistoric creatures as they explore our planet’s interior. The actual center of the Earth is nothing like this fanciful depiction — and in some ways is even more dramatic.
Scientists in 2002 proposed that lurking within this inner core was an innermost section separate from the rest, akin to a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. The increasing sophistication of seismic monitoring enabled this to be confirmed. The inner core’s outer shell and its newly confirmed innermost sphere both are hot enough to be molten but are a solid iron-nickel alloy because the incredible pressure at the center of the Earth renders it a solid state.
The transition from the outer part of the inner core to the innermost sphere appears to be gradual rather than a sharp boundary, Pham said. The researchers were able to differentiate the two regions because the seismic waves acted differently between them.
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