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Dive into the mysteries of Earth's inner core shift and explore the unprecedented earthquake that lasted for over 200 years in this captivating documentary. Discover the shocking truth behind these natural phenomena and unlock the secrets of our planet's geological processes.
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00:01Imagine a world of seething hot metal where iron and nickel dance in a fiery inferno.
00:07This is the inner core, the heart of our planet.
00:11But what if this very heart was changing?
00:14The latest research suggests that the Earth's inner core may be slowing down and even reversing its rotation.
00:20Is this a sign of the end of times?
00:23Will the Earth come crashing down on itself?
00:26Let's find out.
00:28Imagine you have a giant onion and every layer represents a different layer of the Earth.
00:34The center of this onion, the part you can never reach, represents Earth's core.
00:39It's like a mysterious land that no one has ever set foot on,
00:43yet scientists have been trying to uncover its secrets for centuries.
00:48Imagine diving deep into the center of the Earth, beyond the crust, the mantle,
00:53and finally 1,800 miles below the surface where you'd reach the inner core.
00:59It's a ball of seething hot metal made up of solid iron and nickel, and it's so hot it glows
01:06a brilliant white.
01:07It's also surrounded by a liquid outer core.
01:11This mysterious place is unlike anything else on our planet.
01:15And, get this, it's spinning on its own axis.
01:19The inner core is like a fire tornado that's constantly swirling, generating heat and energy from the inside out.
01:26But, why is it so important to study this little piece of the Earth?
01:31Well, it's responsible for creating our magnetic field.
01:34This magnetic field is important to study because it protects us from harmful radiation from the Sun.
01:40It's created by the movement of molten metal in the Earth's outer core and the spinning of the Earth.
01:47These movements generate electrical currents, which then create the magnetic field.
01:52It's like a shield that protects us and helps us keep our planet healthy and safe.
01:57But, there's still so much we don't know about the inner core.
02:02For example, how did it form?
02:04Scientists believe it started to solidify about one billion years ago.
02:09But, why did this happen?
02:10What was the trigger?
02:11Or, for example, what about the inner core's crystal structure?
02:16It's thought to be a type of iron called hexagonal close-packed iron.
02:20But, we still don't know if it's actually the case.
02:24In other words, we may have many theories, but, unfortunately, there's no way to confirm them, at least for now.
02:32So, how do scientists study the inner core if no one can go there?
02:36They use seismology.
02:39Seismology is like a sonic scanner for the Earth.
02:42You send sound waves through the Earth and measure how they bounce back to see what's inside.
02:48That's basically how we discovered the inner core way back in the 1930s.
02:54Imagine you're listening to the sound waves with your special seismology machine.
02:58Suddenly, you hear a strange sound like a ping.
03:01It's different from the other sounds you've been hearing, and you can't explain why.
03:06You keep listening, and you hear the ping again and again.
03:10You start to realize that this ping is happening every time the sound wave hits the Earth's center.
03:16You study the data more and more, and finally, you figure it out.
03:21The Earth has a solid core.
03:23This discovery was a big breakthrough and helped us better understand what's inside our planet and how it works.
03:31Right now, scientists also use something like this to study what's inside our planet.
03:36When earthquakes occur, waves travel through the Earth and bounce off different layers, including the inner core.
03:43By studying these waves, scientists can learn about the inner core's properties, such as its density and temperature.
03:51They're basically solving a mystery by piecing together tiny clues.
03:55And every new discovery brings us one step closer to understanding it.
04:00The inner core is a unique and fascinating part of our planet.
04:04It's a place where the laws of physics work in different ways than they do on the surface.
04:09And it's a place where scientists are still trying to unravel its many mysteries.
04:14And here's one of them.
04:15For some reason, the heart of our planet is about to stop spinning.
04:20A new study about this was published in Nature Geoscience.
04:24It was made by the researchers at Peking University in China.
04:28It has revealed a huge twist.
04:31The scientists found that the inner core spin rate has slowed down significantly.
04:36It's something that no one expected.
04:38But, according to the results of their study, the slowing down began all the way back in 2009.
04:45And that's not all.
04:46Their results also suggest that the inner core may be reversing its rotation.
04:51That's right.
04:52This hot ball of iron and nickel that has been spinning around for millions of years
04:57may be slowing down and changing direction.
05:00It's like when a spinning top starts to slow down, except this is happening in the center of our planet.
05:06Scientists have been puzzled over the discovery for quite some time now.
05:10So, what does it all mean?
05:11And why is this happening?
05:14Well, it turns out that there might be a larger pattern at play.
05:19The scientists believe that this change in the inner core's rotation may be due to the influence of Earth's mantle
05:25and the magnetic field of Earth's outer core.
05:28The mantle and the outer core are affecting the inner core, which is causing its spinning rate to slow down
05:35and potentially change direction.
05:38Before this study, scientists thought that the inner core was spinning faster than the Earth's crust.
05:43However, this new information suggests that the inner core may be slowing down due to the gravitational effect of the
05:50Earth's mantle and the magnetic field of its outer core.
05:54But here's where it gets even more interesting.
05:57When researchers took a closer look at data stretching all the way back to the 1960s,
06:02they discovered that the rotation of Earth's inner core was consistent from the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
06:10Before that, they found that another possible slowing down or reversal event may have occurred in the early 1970s.
06:18It's like the inner core spin is like a roller coaster ride, speeding up, slowing down, and possibly reversing course
06:25over a period of time.
06:27The researchers estimate that these switches occur every seven decades or so, which is pretty wild.
06:33But why is it happening?
06:36Unfortunately, we still have no idea.
06:38The exact reasons for why the Earth's inner core sometimes stops and starts spinning in another direction aren't yet well
06:44understood.
06:45However, scientists believe that it may be due to complex interactions between the solid inner core and the surrounding molten
06:53outer core.
06:55A lot of different things can be at play here.
06:58The changes in the temperature, pressure, and composition of the core, as well as the movement of material within the
07:04core itself, and so on.
07:07Also, as we said before, the Earth's magnetic field and the gravitational forces from the surrounding mantle might also play
07:15a role here.
07:16We need further research to fully understand the mechanisms behind the inner core's rotation changes.
07:22So, is the world ending?
07:24Fortunately, no. Not just yet.
07:26While the inner core is changing direction right now, it's not the end of the world as we know it.
07:31And even though findings may seem like a huge deal, life on Earth's surface hasn't been impacted much, if at
07:38all.
07:39In fact, it's just a fascinating part of the Earth's inner workings that we're learning more about every day.
07:45So, you can say with relief, nothing cataclysmic is happening.
07:50Moreover, according to Hervoja Kalsic, a geophysicist at Australian National University, the inner core is now more in sync with
07:58the rest of the planet than a decade ago when it was spinning a bit faster.
08:02All in all, this new study has added a strange twist to the story of Earth's inner core.
08:08And scientists believe that there's still much more to discover about this mysterious place.
08:14Who knows what other secrets lie in the heart of our planet?
08:18The possibilities are endless.
08:19So, let's keep researching and enjoy our time on this amazing planet.
08:25The strongest earthquake ever to strike east of the Mississippi River that happened over 200 years ago was never over,
08:33according to some scientists.
08:35Most earthquakes last seconds to minutes.
08:38And the official record breaker so far is a silent one in Sumatra that was going on for 32 years.
08:44This slow-slip event triggered a massive quake and a tsunami.
08:48So, if it's true that the new Madrid earthquake is still sending aftershocks, we'll have a new top name for
08:54this sad list.
08:56The earthquake started in December of 1811 with a powerful quake in a sparsely populated part of northeast Arkansas.
09:04They felt the shaking almost a thousand miles away in the White House.
09:08And the tower bells were ringing in Boston, even further away.
09:11It even made the mighty Mississippi flow backward for a few minutes over new waterfalls formed by shifted ground.
09:18The town of New Madrid, Missouri, completely disappeared in the disaster.
09:25The Earth wouldn't stay still until the end of January the following year, when things got serious again.
09:31A massive quake hit.
09:33This time near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, right in the Missouri boot heel.
09:39Geologists believe it was a rupture on the New Madrid Fault, putting even more strain on the nearby Real Foot
09:45Fault.
09:46Just when people thought it couldn't get worse, another two weeks of trembling passed and the Real Foot Fault snapped
09:53deep beneath New Madrid.
09:55Down in Tennessee, about 15 miles south of New Madrid, the ground uplift created Real Foot Lake.
10:02Steamboats were chugging along the river, with thousands of trees floating and acres of woods torn apart by the quake.
10:08In St. Louis, Missouri, which is 160 miles away, buildings were badly damaged, and chimneys fell in Cincinnati, Ohio, 400
10:17miles away.
10:18People all the way in Montreal, Canada, over 1,000 miles away, felt the Earth shake.
10:26Seismologists have registered about 200 small earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone every year since 1974.
10:34Some researchers believe that up to 30% of those were aftershocks from those big quakes back in 1811 and
10:421812.
10:42In parts of the US where there's not much tectonic action going on, these aftershocks could keep rumbling for years,
10:50maybe even centuries, after the big ones hit.
10:53Aftershocks are the Earth's way of releasing all that built-up stress from the main quake.
10:58When the ground shakes from the first earthquake, it puts a lot of pressure on the rocks nearby.
11:03And when those rocks can't take it anymore, they crack, causing even more shaking.
11:09That's the aftershock.
11:10And they can be pretty intense, especially right after the main quake, but weaken over time.
11:19Not all scientists agree that contemporary earthquakes have to do with those from 200 years ago.
11:25We mostly associate faults with those lines where Earth's plates meet.
11:29But there's a whole network of those right under the center of the North American plate.
11:34They're like relics from 750 million years ago, when North America was part of a supercontinent called Rodinia.
11:42When Rodinia started to break up, it left behind these rifts, weak spots in the Earth's crust that run deep
11:48beneath the modern Midwest.
11:50It could explain the earthquake action.
11:52An international team of geologists decided to take a fresh look at three major earthquakes that shook North America and
12:00end the debate.
12:01They used a new math method called the nearest neighbor.
12:04It says that if earthquakes are too close in space, time, and magnitude to be independent background events, then one
12:12is assumed to have triggered the other.
12:14Depending on how you look at the numbers, somewhere between 10 to 65% of the recent quakes in the
12:21region could be aftershocks of those historic earthquakes.
12:24And a huge quake that hit Charleston, South Carolina, at the end of the 19th century, might explain up to
12:3172% of the earthquakes in the area since then.
12:34But not all places are the same, so the scientific debate continues.
12:42In 1774, British explorer James Cook noticed a glow in the distance.
12:48It was the volcano of Mount Yasser in Venuatu.
12:51This bad boy had been spewing lava and ash ever since, and is quite likely that it's been doing that
12:58for way, way longer.
12:59The volcano has been sitting at alert level since October 2016, which means things are really unsettled around there.
13:07They've even marked off a 2,000-foot radius around the crater to keep people safe.
13:12There have been low to moderate outbursts, shooting out ash, gas, and steam, and some bigger blasts throwing stuff outside
13:19the crater.
13:20Satellite images have picked up on some hot spots of sulfur dioxide plumes, showing that Yasser is still cooking up
13:27a big storm down there.
13:30Stromboli, one of the volcanic islands near Sicily, officially has the Guinness World Record as the longest continuously erupting volcano.
13:38It has been putting on a fiery show for over 2,400 years straight.
13:44Ancient sailors nicknamed it the lighthouse of the Mediterranean.
13:48Most of the time, Stromboli is just spitting out spatter.
13:52But every now and then, it throws in some lava flows or shoots up some moderately high fountains.
13:58Sometimes, you might even catch a glimpse of steam-driven outbursts.
14:04Over 200 million years ago, the world went through a major makeover, with not one, not two, but four massive
14:12volcanic eruptions changing the game.
14:14It all happened in Renzelia, a large chunk of island that used to be a supermassive volcano stretching across what's
14:22now British Columbia and Alaska.
14:24This volcanic activity might have helped dinosaurs grow from cat-sized critters into giants we saw in Jurassic Park.
14:32It kicked off a two-million-year rainy season.
14:35It made the whole world hot and humid, and the dinos just loved it.
14:39Researchers dug deep into sediment layers beneath an ancient lake in China to uncover these secrets.
14:46They found traces of volcanic ash and mercury, clear signs of those epic eruptions.
14:52There were carbon signatures showing huge spikes in carbon dioxide levels, making the atmosphere toasty and the rain pouring down.
15:00It all happened in four separate pulses, each triggered by those monstrous volcanic blasts.
15:08There's a spot in a national park, not too far away from Sydney, Australia, where a fire has been raging
15:14deep underground for at least 6,000 years.
15:18They call it Burning Mountain, and it's a coal-seam fire, burning its way through a layer of coal beneath
15:24the Earth's surface.
15:25Once these underground fires start, they're pretty much impossible to put out.
15:29This ball of fire is up to 30 feet wide and extremely hot.
15:33But there's no flame. It's smoldering.
15:36The fire has been creeping along at a pace of about 3 feet per year.
15:40A local farmer first spotted it in the 19th century and thought it was a volcano.
15:45The people who have lived here for ages believe this place is sacred.
15:49They've used it for cooking and crafting tools, and tell that it started from a widow's tears or the torch
15:55of a hero.
15:56But experts think it could have been a lightning strike or coal heating up like a summer barbecue from the
16:03interaction with oxygen.
16:07Some say it might have been burning since before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
16:11No one knows exactly how long this mountain will burn or in what direction it'll move.
16:16Right now, the coal has enough oxygen to burn for centuries or even millennia without human intervention.
16:23The fire is heating up the mountain like a giant oven, making it crack and crumble, inviting in more oxygen
16:29to feed on.
16:30Even if humans decide to take action, these coal seam fires need truckloads of water and liquid nitrogen to tame
16:37them.
16:38Several years ago, explorers noticed that the smolder was creeping close to a cliff overlooking a little river.
16:45And depending on what the coal seam decides to do next, we could see some dramatic changes here in the
16:51coming decades.
16:52There could be flames with much more heat, or the coal seam could go deep, extinguish itself, and smolder out.
16:59And the wind cranking lass on the water.
17:01That's니 so WHAT I'm doing.
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