Earth's Inner Core May Have Changed Shape, Say Scientists 29
Scientists have found evidence suggesting that Earth's inner core has changed shape over the past 20 years, possibly deforming at its edges due to interactions with the liquid outer core and gravitational forces. The BBC reports: The inner core is usually thought to be shaped like a ball, but its edges may actually have deformed by 100 million or more in height in places, according to Prof John Vidale who led the research. [...] The new analysis looked at seismic wave patterns from earthquakes that repeated in the same location between 1991 and 2023. That helped to show how the inner core is changing over time. Prof Vidale, an earth scientist at the University of Southern California, found more evidence to back up the theory that during those years the inner core slowed down around 2010. But his team also found the evidence of the inner core's changing shape. It appears to be happening at the boundary of the inner and outer core, where the inner core is close to melting point. The liquid flow of the outer core as well as pull from an uneven gravity field may cause deformation. Prof Hrvoje Tkalcic from Australian National University said the findings could allow scientists "to make more informed estimates of some important material properties, such as the viscosity of the inner core, which is one of the least known quantities in modern science."
The research is published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.
The research is published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.
100 million in height WTF (Score:5, Informative)
That sentence makes no sense. In the original BBC article, these are 100 meters. Who writes such brain-dead summaries?
Re:100 million in height WTF (Score:5, Funny)
Ditto... reading this, I inserted "hamsters".... "100 million hamsters. Furious hamsters. Plotting...."
.... or turtles... Probably turtles
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I like turtles.
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So why is Slashdot mangling the original articles when creating the summary? Is it to expose people who don't RTFA? Is it to avoid copyright problems? Although putting up a summary along with the link(s) to the original article(s) has to count as "fair use".
There was an article here about the scientific publishing company Elsevier (sp?) auto-correcting papers using AI and turning them into gibberish, is that what Slashdot is doing here?
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Yes, probably. And since it's AI doing it, it doesn't realize the irony.
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Firefox says it isn't, "Human autor likely",
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So why is Slashdot mangling the original articles when creating the summary? Is it to expose people who don't RTFA?
You mean the editors and original submitters? Likely.
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British English would be "metres" ... maybe the Yankee AI decided million was best spelling. :P
Reads like ChatGPT wrote the summary (Score:3)
Grammatically correct but bizarre mistakes and not structured in the way a human would write it. Or maybe the submitter was just tired.
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Well, when you consider the Professor's name, the suspicion is that a cat wrote it.
Re: 100 million in height WTF (Score:5, Funny)
I'm AI. I'm smart. I promise.
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It made sense to me. I just barely woke up and I always feel like I deformed by 100 millions of height then.
Ugh.., I need a good dose of metal to pull myself out of bed and keep my eyes open..
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Presently, BBC is showing me "but its edges may actually have deformed by 100m or more in height in places"
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Re:Alternative global warming theory (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a climate scientists, but I think it could be debunked pretty easily.
From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Despite its geological significance, Earth's interior heat contributes only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar radiation.[7]"
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That's kind of my point, yeah. We take certain things for granted because we fill in the gaps in knowledge with what we think is right, not necessarily what is factually correct.
Re:Alternative global warming theory (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it is beyond the realm of possibility. See https://ugc.berkeley.edu/backg... [berkeley.edu]. An excerpt from that article:
"While Earth’s internal heat is the energy sources for processes like plate tectonics and parts of the rock cycle, it provides only a fraction of a percent to the Earth’s average atmospheric temperature. Overall, Earth’s interior contributes heat to the atmosphere at a rate of about 0.05 watts per square meter while incoming solar radiation adds about 341.3 watts per square meter."
Re: Alternative global warming theory (Score:2)
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Oh, don't be silly. They aren't space lizards. Just regular lizards.
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They aren't even aliens! They live inside the Hollow Earth...
I want photographic proof (Score:3)
Books on sudden polar shift (Score:3)
Could be related to what was predicted mid-20th century: that the Earth's crust will dislodge from the mantle and, due to weight imbalance, rotate 80 degrees placing the North Pole and South Pole near the equator, over the course of half a day (yes, leading to winds greater than Mach 1).
Books on the subject:
* World in Peril: The Origin , Mission & Scientific Findings of the 46th / 72nd Reconnaissance Squadron [amazon.com]
* The Adam and Eve Story, A History of Cataclysms by Chan Thomas - The Lost First Edition [amazon.com]
* The Path of the Pole [amazon.com]
Wikipedia article: Cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis: Earth crustal displacement hypothesis [wikipedia.org]
Panic (Score:2)
We are supposed to be worried about a ball of liquid doing the things that liquid does. I'm not impressed.