That’s a whole lot of fancy words. The core is that they used a fancy wave equation. In that context, the topological insulator is an inspiration rather than an

That’s a whole lot of fancy words. The core is that they used a fancy wave equation. In that context, the topological insulator is an inspiration rather than an exact and accurate model. It’s similar to the layman view of an atom as a miniature solar system. There are some similarities, but also very significant differences and not all knowledge is transferable from one to the other. It is not particularly surprising that we would find new solutions to Navier-Stokes equation applied at the level of a whole planet, these things are very complex and far from completely understood. > Then why can the earth can be treated as a topoligical insulator and what implications does this have? That’s jumping to conclusions a bit. Again, they have found similarities in atmospheric flows and magnetic currents in topological insulators. It does not mean that the Earth is one, or that all properties of topological insulators also applies to the Earth. > Or maybe even to the earths core? There is bound to be some similarities, as with any fluid flow (assuming we’re not talking about the solid inner core). There are also significant differences in things like viscosity, compressibility, etc. So yeah, that’s a possibility, but as in the atmosphere, that would not make the outer core a particularly quantum object.