Scientists claim that Earth's inner core has altered the planet's rotation.
Making heads spin
A recent study suggests that the Earth's core may no longer be rotating or may potentially be doing so now.
Our planet's core is made up of an inner core of solid metal that is around 70% the size of the Moon, and an outer layer of liquid metal.
According to conventional wisdom, the core rotates the same direction as the rest of planet Earth when viewed from the North Pole.
However, experts at Peking University in China have shown that the core's rotation stopped around the year 2009 and then restarted in the opposite direction after 60 years of seismic wave data analysis.
"We suspect that the core is spinning in one direction and then the other, like a swing, relative to the surface of the Earth," research authors Xiaodong Song and Yi Yang told AFP.
They stated that it takes this swing almost 70 years to complete a cycle (moving first in one direction, then the other).
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