https://www.livescience.com/61715-earth-...radox.html
EXCERPT: One day, about a billion years ago, Earth's inner core had a growth spurt. The molten ball of liquid metal at the center of our planet rapidly crystallized due to lowering temperatures, growing steadily outward until it reached the roughly 760-mile (1,220 kilometers) diameter to which it's thought to extend today. That's the conventional story of the inner core's creation, anyway. But according to a new paper published online this week in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, that story is impossible.
In the paper, the researchers argued that the standard model of how the Earth's core formed is missing a crucial detail about how metals crystallize: a mandatory, massive drop in temperature that would be extremely difficult to achieve at core pressures. Weirder still, the researchers said, once you account for this missing detail, the science seems to suggest that Earth's inner core shouldn't exist at all....
MORE: https://www.livescience.com/61715-earth-...radox.html
EXCERPT: One day, about a billion years ago, Earth's inner core had a growth spurt. The molten ball of liquid metal at the center of our planet rapidly crystallized due to lowering temperatures, growing steadily outward until it reached the roughly 760-mile (1,220 kilometers) diameter to which it's thought to extend today. That's the conventional story of the inner core's creation, anyway. But according to a new paper published online this week in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, that story is impossible.
In the paper, the researchers argued that the standard model of how the Earth's core formed is missing a crucial detail about how metals crystallize: a mandatory, massive drop in temperature that would be extremely difficult to achieve at core pressures. Weirder still, the researchers said, once you account for this missing detail, the science seems to suggest that Earth's inner core shouldn't exist at all....
MORE: https://www.livescience.com/61715-earth-...radox.html