Far away, beneath the Earth’s surface, a giant may have started spinning in a different direction than ours, according to a study whose results should not end a controversy that has stirred experts.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal “Nature Geoscience,” suggests that the core of Pluto, a sphere the size of Pluto, may have stopped spinning and started doing so in a different direction.
About five thousand kilometers above the surface, this iron ‘planet within a planet’ has free motion as it floats in the liquid envelope of the outer core.
The exact mechanism of this cycle provokes debate. Seismic waves caused by Earth tremors are known based on their analysis as they pass through the center of the planet.
By analyzing these tides over the past 60 years, Peking University’s Xiaotong Chang and Yi Yang concluded that the center’s cycle “almost stopped in 2009 before restarting in the opposite direction.”
“We think that the core, relative to the Earth’s surface, rotates in one direction and then the other, like a swing set,” they told AFP.
According to their estimates, “a complete cycle is about 70 years”. The last change in the cycle prior to 2009 occurred in the 1970s. The next one, always according to these scientists, should happen in the 2040s.
This cycle, according to him, changes in the length of the day are more or less reflected in small variations in the extra time the planet has to rotate on its axis.
To date, there are few indications of the influence of this circulation on the passage of the Earth’s surface.
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