Ever since elementary school, we have always learned that Earth has four layers - the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core. It has been in all of our textbooks, in all of the pictures on google, and what teachers have always told us. It turns out, that we learned a LIE! Well not a lie exactly, but just not the truth.
According to a recent study, there is another layer inside Earth's inner core called the Innermost Inner Core (they are running out of names for these layers). As we also all learned in our earlier education, scientists have not dug deeper than the crust, so how did they find out about this layer so far away from us? Well, they have to get creative and use signals that the earth sends from the inside. These signals come from seismic waves, pressurized rocks, and computer programs that can put all of this data together. After collecting the data, they sort through it to explain abnormalities reported in previous research.
When there are earthquakes, there are seismic waves that go through the earth, and what's in the earth determines the speed and direction that these waves move at (physics!). Joanna Stephenson, a geophysics researcher, and her team found that waves traveling in the north/south direction moved much faster than waves traveling in the east/west direction. But, once the east/west waves reach 375 miles from the center of the earth, they shift 54 degrees. This somehow implies that there is an extra layer but I still don't understand why, so if anyone can explain that to me go ahead.
This reminds me of when science teachers and parents always reminisce about the days when Pluto was a planet. I always wished for a major scientific discovery to happen when I was alive, and my wish has come true. We are going to be alive when science textbooks are literally updated with extremely important new information. This doesn't really affect our lives much, but it is just cool to live through thinking there were four layers, to thinking that now there are five. What do you think about this? Does it freak you out that you could be believing something false that scientists just haven't disproven yet?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a35731571/earth-has-secret-hidden-layer/
Hey Eden, it does not really freak me out that scientists had not discovered another layer in the Earth. In the science world, it is very common for the information learned in the classroom to become disproven as the years go on. As you said, Pluto is one such example, which was removed from the list of planets recently. Also, thanks for the scientific information!
ReplyDeleteHi Eden. I actually think about this all the time. It's really not that hard to believe that there's a possibility that everything we've learned is a lie and scientists are just covering it up. I guess we'll never really know, but I wouldn't be surprised if we found out someday that the government was hiding a bunch of stuff from us. That's also really cool to see actual science happening in our time and major discoveries like another layer to the Earth is awesome!
ReplyDelete