Earth's Inner Core Is Solid, But Squishier Than Previously Thought

brindafella writes: Earthquakes are telling scientists more about the core of the Earth, specifically that it is squishier than previously thought (by about 2.5%.) Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkali & Thanh-Son Pham of the Australian National University have made sense of data collected by seismographs around the world to put new numbers on the density and pressure of the core. In Science magazine, they show that the pressure is 167.4 +/- 1.6 gigapascals (GPa) in Earth's center. For reference, standard atmospheric pressure is 101,325 pascals (Pa), so the center of the Earth is around 61 million times this pressure, but still 2.5% lower than expected.

Summary says "101,325 pascals (Pa)"

[Anonymous Coward]

For Americans: "101.325 pascals (Pa)"

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[rrohbeck]

How much is that in football fields? Or, since we're talking pressure, olympic swimming pools per football field?

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[Mashiki]

It's obviously 748,931 Libraries of Congress.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

No, that would be for Europeans. One ATM of pressure is 101325 Pascals [wikipedia.org], the the Americans would write that as given in the summary, 101,325 - and many Europeans would write it as 101.325. Also for we Americans, you could write 14.7 psi...

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[ShanghaiBill]

the the Americans would write that as given in the summary, 101,325

Not just Americans, but also most of Asia, except for Indonesia. Even in Europe, the UK and some parts of Switzerland use a decimal point, although the Swiss use an apostrophe as a thousands separator.

Here is a map [wikipedia.org]. Although it looks close to a tie, it really isn't because the areas using an American style decimal point include densely populated countries such as China, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan, while the decimal-comma areas include lots of deserts, tundra, and rainforest.

The dot wins.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

He's working through Carnegie's tome on winning friends and influencing people, first. Unfortunately, he's going using the serial-killer's Cliff Notes edition to do so...

Re:Summary says "101,325 pascals (Pa)"

[ShanghaiBill]

No shanghai bitch, it's not a popularity contest.

Ok, lets go by nukes instead. Of the 9 countries known to possess nuclear weapons, 7 use the decimal point.

The dot wins again.

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[Hognoxious]

Also for we Americans, you could write 14.7 psi...

How many standard[1] footballs is that?

[1] i.e. not Patriot ones.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

That would be 13 PSI (as opposed to one Brady, which is about 11.3 PSI).

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[TomGreenhaw]

For Americans: "101.325 pascals (Pa)"

We use commas to separate thousands, so for this American: "101,325 pascals (Pa)"
However for most non-scientific Americans this is also wrong.
Its 29.921252402 inches of mercury.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Even the trolls here suck now. Rob Malda went from what used to be a great site to talking about baseball and basketball [bloggerballsports.com]. Someone, please take me back to 1999.

*** WARNING ***

Don't click that link.

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[LynnwoodRooster]

No. 1 ATM is ~101,325 Pa, or about 14.7 psi. [wikipedia.org] Your number would be 1000 ATM.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I think the GP was saying 101.325 kPa, which is 101,325 Pa. I think they were using a comma for the decimal instead of the period used in the USA and other places. Notice the "(= 101325 Pa)" after "101,325 kPa".

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[LynnwoodRooster]

Then I'm not sure why he wrote what he wrote? That's exactly what the summary stated.

Predicted over 50 years ago...

[unitron]

...by Laura Petrie on "The Dick Van Dyke Show".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

15:50

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[goombah99]

How many years were you waiting to unload that braincell?

61 million times?

[Mostly a lurker]

This is not an area I know much about, but the numbers quoted seem screwy to me. How does 167.4 GPa (167,400,000,000 Pa) / 101,325 Pa (by my calculations 1,652,110) come out as 61,000,000?

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[hcs_$reboot]

Reverse 1 and 6 and divide by 10. Decadyslexia disease affects primarily tired editors.

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[mentil]

Decadyslexia disease affects primarily tired editors.

I hear Viagra works pretty well for that.

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[mentil]

Oh, wait, nevermind. Thought you said something else.

Is Thought To Be Solid

[blindvic]

> Earth's Inner Core Is Solid, But Squishier Than Previously Thought So following the logic, is should say: "Earth's Inner Core Now Is Thought To Be Solid, But Squishier Than Previously Thought."

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[RockDoctor]

Errr, let's see. That would be for a PP(O2) of 2 atmospheres, and for normal air at 20% v/v O2, that implies a total air pressure of 10 atmospheres. I get that at between 20 and 30km depth, depending on the model of atmospheric compression you choose.

Or were you just trying to be funny?

Units

[Hognoxious]

What exactly is the SI unit of squishiness anyway?

Re:Units

[jd]

Figs. One metre of lateral motion when crushed by one Pascal of pressure is one fig. The energy so created is thus measured in fig newtons.

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[RockDoctor]

It's a measure of strength, so it's unit is the Pascal. (In practice, for geological and engineering materials, MPa is the day-to-day unit.

Fudge factor needed! Help

[lcam]

What does squishy mean? That the earths core is compressible or that it is less viscous than thought? The article seems to think compressible.

Sounds like scientists have thought of a way to keep their theory alive and this is not the first time they have used this "fudge factor" technique. Just to mention a few other "new" elements added to theories recently as fudge factor elements that keep theories alive:

Black Holes - Gravitational theory and measurements of the visible stellar systems don't result in

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[whit3]

What does squishy mean? That the earths core is compressible or that it is less viscous than thought? The article seems to think compressible. Sounds like scientists have thought of a way to keep their theory alive and ...

Young's modulus is the 'compressibility' that, in combination with density, determines the speed of (and the refraction and reflection of) P-type sound waves.

Just as you can see the extra sparkle of a diamond next to a piece of glass, the refraction of seismic waves allows one to