The iron-rich core at the centre of the Earth is squishy like rubber Maksym Yemelyanov/Alamy
Earth’s inner core is surprisingly soft, and wiggling iron atoms may help explain why.
The innermost part of our planet is a solid iron ball smaller than the moon and almost as hot as the surface of the sun. Researchers cannot sample this inner core directly, but studies of seismic waves that pass through it indicate that it is unexpectedly soft – probably more like rubber than cast iron.
Jung-Fu Lin at the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues wanted to understand…
