Scientists studying Earth’s core have come up with a shocking estimate

[Mike Wehner]

• Scientists studying the age of Earth's core have found that it's likely much younger than some estimates suggested.
• Experimenting with iron under extreme conditions allowed scientists to better grasp the forces that shaped the inner and outer core.
• Based on the data, the team believes the core to be as young as 1 billion years.

We don't see it as we go about our day-to-day lives, but Earth's core is always at work to keep us alive and comfortable on our home planet. The core is responsible for our planet's magnetic field which protects us from some of the dangers of space, redirecting charged particles from the Sun and protecting our atmosphere. It's an incredibly important feature of our planet, so it makes sense that researchers would like to know how old it is.

In a new paper published in the American Physical Society's Physical Review Letters, researchers explain that, after experimenting with recreating the conditions of the core for years, they believe Earth's core is quite a bit younger than previously thought. They now say that the core is likely somewhere between 1 billion and 1.3 billion years old.

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Scientists studying Earth’s core have come up with a shocking estimate originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 at 00:16:52 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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