Confirmed: Earth's core spins faster than crust

[Cylinder]

From the National Geographic story:

Analysis of nearly identical earthquakes that happened years apart proves that Earth's moon-size inner core rotates faster than the rest of the planet, a team of geophysicists report today.

The finding is "unambiguous" and should settle a nearly decadelong debate over the matter, said Xiaodong Song, a geophysicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


Earth's iron core consists of a solid inner core about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) in diameter—about the size of the moon—and a fluid outer core measures about 4,200 miles (7,000 kilometers) across.

[snip]

Their calculations suggest the inner core rotates at a rate of 0.3 to 0.5 degree per year faster than the mantle and crust. That's about 50,000 times faster than the tectonic plates move on the planet's surface.

"So, 0.3 to 0.5 degrees may not sound like so much, but within the solid Earth system, that is pretty fast," Song said.

The article is worth the read and explains how the measurements were taken.

[jfribrg]

Maybe we should send a team of scientists down to the core to slow it down

[azazul]

Maybe we should send a team of scientists down to the core to slow it down

Yes, but how, let me think. Oh, I've got it, lets use nukes, they solve everything.

[NEOWatcher]

Maybe we should send a team of scientists down to the core to slow it down

Yes, but how, let me think. Oh, I've got it, lets use nukes, they solve everything.

:-k Hmm... Strange thought. If we had a set of brake shoes around the core. (metalic of course, although asbestos might be better)
Comparing masses, how much faster would we end up spinning.

[hhEb09'1]

ToSeeked--note, my comment about the 1996 results. I mean, not the part about the core slowing down.