Key Takeaways on Earth's Inner Core Earth's inner core is solid and blistering hot. For decades, scientists have known ...

Scientists say they’ve confirmed Earth’s inner core has been slowing down. Here’s what it could mean — and why the topic has been the subject of fierce debate.

The rotation of Earth’s inner core may have paused and it could even go into reverse, new research suggests.. The Earth is formed of the crust, the mantle and the inner and outer cores. The ...

The inner core was discovered in 1936, and its size (about 20% of Earth's radius) is one of the best-constrained properties of the deep Earth.

The surface of Earth's inner core may be shape-shifting, new research suggests. The study, published Feb. 10 in the journal Nature, looked at earthquake waves that have skimmed the edge of the ...

On average, the inner core's radius grows evenly by about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) every year. Gravity corrects for the lopsided growth in the east by pushing new crystals toward the west.

Earth’s core consists of a solid iron-nickel ball rotating within a layer of liquid metal. But that ball may not be as simple as it seems: new research suggests the inner core contains its own ...

Behind the expedition to the Earth's mantle 04:06. Earth's inner core, a hot iron ball the size of Pluto, has stopped spinning in the same direction as the rest of the planet and might even be ...

It is true that the outer core generates electrical currents that sustain the planet’s magnetic field, but Vidale says shifts in the Texas-size inner core are too minuscule to have an impact.

The inner core is fairly young, in geological terms — estimates range from 600 million to a billion years, Dr. Cormier said. That is a fraction of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history, ...