How gravitational forces stop Earth’s asymmetrical core from tipping us over

More than 5,000 kilometers beneath us, Earth’s solid metal inner core wasn’t discovered until 1936. Almost a century later, we’re still struggling to answer basic questions about when and how it first formed. These aren’t easy puzzles to solve. We can’t directly sample the inner core, so the key to unravelling its mysteries lies in collaboration between seismologists, who indirectly sample it with seismic waves, geodynamicists, who create models of its dynamics, and mineral physicists, who study the behavior of iron alloys at high pressures and temperatures. Combining these disciplines, scientists have delivered an important clue about what’s happening miles…

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