Scientists have discovered that the Earth has two cores

Scientists have released new findings which point to the Earth having not one, but two cores – and it shows that basically everything we thought we knew about science can be disproven at any time.

Researchers have indicated that there is a second core sitting inside the inner core. According to them, the discovery could also lead us to understand more about how the Earth first became hospitable to life.

Scientists from The Australian National University have released new findings relating to the innermost inner core (IMIC) of Earth and they claim it has a radius of about 400 miles.

Thanh-Son Phạm and Hrvoje Tkalčić are the researchers behind the new project. They made the new discovery after analysing earthquakes that produced 'seismic waves reverberating through the entire planet'.

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It was these observations that led to new information being revealed and allowed them to 'spot new details about the core'.

What could the discovery tell us about the history of the planet?Argonne National Labratory/Creative Commons

They also found that IMIC is a “solid metallic ball” which measures around 800 miles in diameter – around one per cent of the planet’s overall volume.

“It simply means that the iron crystals — iron, which is dominant in the inner core — is probably organized in a different way than in the outer shell of the inner core,” the research reads.

The findings state: “To our knowledge, reverberations from more than two passages are hitherto unreported in the seismological literature."

The pair also added that the IMIC is a ‘time capsule of our planet’s history’.

Hinting that the findings could have further ramifications for the study of the planet’s history, they added that it could represent a 'fossilised record of a significant global event from the past'.

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