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notsoexpat

Male. Lives in savannah, Georgia, United States. Born on November 7, 1960. Is single.

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Evidently I need to make one point blatantly clear...if you are anti-Israel in any form or fashion, ... View More

notsoexpat

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notsoexpat

September 27, 2026 10:16 am

Something Inside Earth Is Stealing Time Every clock on Earth is being disturbed by something nearly 1,864 miles (3,000 kilometres) beneath our feet. The effect is tiny. Over decades, the length of a... View MoreSomething Inside Earth Is Stealing Time Every clock on Earth is being disturbed by something nearly 1,864 miles (3,000 kilometres) beneath our feet. The effect is tiny. Over decades, the length of a day drifts by only a few milliseconds. No human being can feel it, yet atomic clocks record the change with unnerving precision. Earth sometimes turns fractionally faster. Sometimes it slows. For years, scientists knew that the cause must lie somewhere inside the planet. They could measure angular momentum passing between the mantle and the core, but the mechanism moving it remained hidden behind thousands of kilometres of solid rock. New research published in Nature offers a remarkable answer. The planet’s inner core may be pulling gravitationally against the mantle, creating a slow, invisible struggle that alters Earth’s rotation and changes the duration of our days. At the center of Earth sits a solid sphere of iron and nickel roughly the size of the Moon. It is surrounded by a churning ocean of liquid metal that generates the planet’s magnetic field. Above that lies the enormous rocky mantle carrying the continents and ocean basins around with it. These layers do not rotate together as one perfectly synchronized machine. The inner core can turn slightly faster or slower than the mantle. Its direction of relative motion may even reverse. When the core moves out of alignment with dense structures in the mantle, gravity attempts to pull them back together. The result is a planetary tug-of-war. Researchers compared records of Earth’s rotation with seismic reconstructions of inner-core movement and models of flowing metal in the outer core. Their analysis indicates that gravitational torque from the inner core drives the broad changes in day length, while electromagnetic forces and pressure against irregularities near the core-mantle boundary resist that motion. The model also suggests that the inner core may be far less rigid than its name implies. Under crushing pressure and temperatures approaching those at the surface of the Sun, solid iron may deform over a matter of years. The study further supports the possible existence of a highly conductive, iron-rich layer only a few kilometres thick along the bottom of the mantle. No instrument has ever reached these regions. The deepest borehole humanity has drilled penetrated just over twelve kilometres, barely scratching Earth’s outer skin. Yet by measuring missing milliseconds, scientists are beginning to reconstruct the machinery at the center of the world. Some parts of that reconstruction remain uncertain. The changes in day length are directly measured, but the proposed gravitational mechanism depends on seismic models, magnetic-field observations and computer simulations. The hidden layers cannot yet be observed directly. Still, the implication is extraordinary. A day feels like one of nature’s fixed units, as dependable as sunrise. In reality, each rotation carries the influence of a deforming metal sphere buried beneath an ocean of molten iron. Every clock on the surface is quietly recording its movement. We cannot descend far enough to see Earth’s deepest machinery. So the machinery sends us a signal through time. Source: “Gravitational torque drives multidecadal variations in length of day,” published in Nature on September 23, 2026

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Coolbeans

I KNEW IT!! I knew something shifty is going on with Earth's time. We're already 1/4 of the way into the 21st century! Time seems to be speeding up. I thought it was something in space like an asteroid passing close enough to speed us up. Never thought it would be something at Earth's core. Very int... View More

1 September 28, 2026 Edited