The discovery of a new layer in the core of the Earth could allow us to understand more about the history of our planet. The team, led by researchers fromAustralian National University (ANU), confirmed the existence of an "innermost core of the Earth".
It is still difficult to analyze and observe this newly discovered layer, he explains Joanne Stephenson, lead author of the study, but it could be an indication of a mysterious an unknown event that occurred in the course of the history of our planet.
It is an exhilarating discovery that could have us rewriting all the textbooks
Joanne Stephenson
The team's study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The "new" core layer in the Earth's core
The composition of this new layer suggests that our planet's history may have included two different cooling events. Investigating and analyzing the inner part of the earth's core will make us better understand its history and its evolution.
What we knew about the core of the earth prior to this discovery
What we knew until this recent ANU study is that the Earth is composed of four main layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core and the inner core. The new level discovered by the team is located within the inner core.
Suspicions about the existence of another layer in the earth's core had been around for a while, but the data held by science was very unclear.
“We got around this by using a very clever search algorithm to explore thousands of models of the inner core,” says Stephenson.
A better understanding of the structure of our Earth, and therefore of history, allows us to understand the changes that occurred before humans could observe them and to relate them to modern geological changes.
