IT’S not just the sphere of culture that has an east-west divide. The Earth’s inner core of solid iron also behaves differently in each hemisphere, transmitting seismic waves faster in the eastern side than in the west.
The phenomenon has baffled scientists, but now numerical simulations developed by Julien Aubert of the French national research centre’s Institute of Geophysics in Paris and his team suggest that the anomaly may be due to subterranean “cyclones” found in parts of the liquid iron outer core.
These swirling cyclones drag cooler material from the top of the outer core right down to the…
