There have been words going around about how our planet’s inner core stopped spinning when it didn’t. It just rotates slower than the rest of the layers that lie above it. Scientists find a surprising observation – that its rotation is nearly ceasing and may be experiencing a turning-back – like a car maneuvering before turning to the other direction and then rushing along with the rest of the cars in the adjacent lane.
Earth has been our home since time immemorial. We’ve been living on this planet for as long as we can remember – maybe not long since it became something to live in, but long enough to know and understand things. We wake up during sunrise, rest when it sets, and sleep when the moon takes over. It has been that way since the stone age. But instead of living in a cave, we live in a box-like structure with a triangular shape above our heads. We have repeated this cycle, just like how the Earth keeps spinning relentlessly, but not once did we hear that the central core, our planet’s very own hard-boiled egg yolk, has stopped spinning, right?
The inner core’s rotation may be slower than it used to, but it does not mean it stopped spinning. Its rotation is relative to the Earth’s surface; the cycle is like a swing that goes back and forth and is now more in sync with the rest of the planet compared to the last decade. This change of rotation has been inferred because of the temporal variations between successive seismic waves – an elastic wave in the Earth, produced by an earthquake, that followed the same route through the inner core.
Based on scientists Yang and Song’s calculations, this phenomenon causes a slight change to the length of days and our global temperature, but there is no overall sign nor evidence that suggests that this possible change of rotation can affect the lives of the people on Earth. Other scientists are also on it: studying and probing more data from the inner core’s rotation until they figure out what is happening, though it may take a decade to do so. What is certain though is that our planet is changing and that we have a lot to learn about Earth.