Scott Sutherland – Scientists have discovered a mystery at the centre of the Earth. The solid iron core of our planet is cooling faster on one side than the other, and nobody knows why.

The interior of Earth is arranged in layers. Moving downward from the surface, there’s the rocky crust and mantle, the liquid nickel-iron outer core, and the solid nickel-iron inner core. Crushed under all the weight of the rest of the planet around it, the inner core experiences pressures over 3.5 million times stronger than the air pressure we experience here on the surface. With this intense pressure comes intense heating. The temperature of the inner core is around 5,200°C — nearly as hot as the Sun’s surface. Continue reading →