7 ms·
Earth’s inner core is growing unevenly. Why isn’t the planet tipping?
- beprogrammed 5y agohttps://trimread.org/articles/1167 https://trimread.org/articles/1167
- thomquaid 5y agolava lamp
- Stratoscope 5y agoYou may be on to something. It could be used as the world's greatest random number generator. https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-production/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-produ...
- amelius 5y agolava lamps have a window
- mjamil 5y agoA non-paywall version covering the same phenomenon: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/06/03/is-earths-core-lopsided-strange-goings-on-in-our-planets-interior/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/06/03/is-earths-core-lopsided...
- robbedpeter 5y agoObviously the mole people's gravity engines are keeping things stable. Since things like this result in a different gravity in different parts of the world, can that be exploited for energy generation, more efficient shipping, or anything beneficial? Is there any benefit in slightly greater or lesser gravity in chemical or chip or materials manufacture?
- labster 5y agoLook, I’m from the government and I’d like to remind you all that the mole people are just a myth. We have mining regulations to save lives, except not from the mole men. Let’s say it’s for safety. Anyway, you should trust the government. Generally the variation in gravitational field is so weak it doesn’t do much except add errors to data. It’s more efficient to launch satellites near the equator, but that’s not because of the Earth’s bulge or gravity, but rather the big radial velocity down there.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago>It’s more efficient to launch satellites near the equator Perhaps one day from the very appropriately named Ascension Island? It would be pricy to ship things out there, but it's had an RAF presence on it for donkey's years and if something went wrong it's very far from population centres and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean.
- uberswe 5y agoRAF = Royal Air Force? I'm neither British or American and RAF stands for Recruit-a-Friend to me.
- signaturefish 5y agoCorrect, the British Royal Air Force.
- BoxOfRain 5y agoSorry, I should have wrote that one out! You're correct, it's the Royal Air Force.
- shreyshnaccount 5y agosounds like a cover up to me /s
- smoyer 5y agoIf I could only get a ride to the hole at one of the poles I'd be happy to go visit the mole people. I also heard a rumor that they're suing Australia over the use of "down under".
- ur-whale 5y agoWell, this is likely be a very naive way to look at it, but ... what would generate the gravity pull to actually make it tilt ?
- corin_ 5y agoThe Sun and the Moon have a big enough impact to make the our planet spin, orbit the Sun, cause tides, etc.
- mertd 5y agoTilt is with respect to our orbit around the sun and apparently mostly the moon is to blame for the tilt. https://www.obliquity.com/info/meaning.html https://www.obliquity.com/info/meaning.html
- marcyb5st 5y agoI don't think it's gravity as that is well measured to the scale of nm/s^2 and any external localized field distortion would have been measured. If I have to guess, it would be that the below Indonesia (where the bulge is according to the article) there is more radiative cooling happening either due to a thinner crust or higher concentration of more thermally conductive elements in the inner and outer core/mantle/crust. These effects can be localized because the soup from which the Earths' insides were made was "liquid" to a point and so an even mix of elements is highly unlikely even after accounting for billions of years of gravitational differentiation. For example, the outer core is the only technically liquid part and it still has an incredibly high viscosity (1000s to billions of times the viscosity of water [1]) and definitely you wouldn't call that a liquid in your day-to-day life. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.3333 https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.3333
- Paedor 5y agoYou don't necessarily need gravity to make something tilt, it can happen naturally during rotation. For instance, imagine spinning something that distorts asymmetrically, like a pencil with some silly putty attached to one side. Alternatively, there's stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPfZ_XzisU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPfZ_XzisU. Angular momentum's always conserved, but the axis of rotation might not be.
- noduerme 5y agoIt's already well known that some areas of the planet have stronger gravity than others, thanks to large rock deposits; e.g. the Himalayas. What I sort of wonder about this is, how does a single body's fluid dynamics change if relativistic effects come into play? Time would appear relatively slower on the heavier side of Earth as viewed from the lighter side. Maybe that accounts for some part of offsetting the irregular shape in terms of preventing wobbles...? Since one side can't move without the other, but one is in a relatively deeper gravitational well and the motion isn't perfectly rotational, maybe it's even the other way around...? i.e. maybe the fluid movement offsets the relativistic difference in angular momentum over time? As one side extends it bends space more which slows down its rotation relative to the other side.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoThe relativistic effects are negligible.
- wombatmobile 5y agoHow does the earth's core affect ocean thermodynamics, and consequentially, how does the earth's core affect climate?
- willis936 5y agoI thought it was well-accepted that current flows and their resultant magnetic fields were the dominant forces in the Earth's core. Modeling a chaotic dynamo is difficult, but people are working on it. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am with this article. https://youtu.be/rAYW9n8i-C4 https://youtu.be/rAYW9n8i-C4