Africa-Press – Liberia. The results of the new study may help explain why Earth’s inner core structure “seems to change so much over time” and how convection currents that generate our planet’s magnetic field are created, though this model is still yet to be proven. New research suggests that the nature of our planet’s inner core may be quite different from what was previously believed, Live Science reports.
According to the media outlet, computer simulations conducted by the authors of the new study show that Earth’s inner core could exist in a “superionic state,” with a “whirling mix of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon molecules” continuously “sloshing through a grid-like lattice of iron.”
Because sending a probe into Earth’s core, with its extreme pressures and high temperatures, would be problematic, to put it mildly, the researchers instead used a computer programme designed to recreate the core’s conditions on elements that likely found there – such as iron, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon – and fed seismic data to the programme.
The resulting simulations suggest that atoms in Earth’s core would be transformed into a superionic alloy, which is “a framework of iron atoms around which the other elements, driven by powerful convection currents, are able to freely swim,” as the media outlet puts it.
While the results of this simulation may help explain why Earth’s inner core structure “seems to change so much over time” and how convection currents that generate our planet’s magnetic field are created, this model is still yet to be proven, the media outlet points out.
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