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In 2003, Hollywood released a disaster movie dubbed The Core in which the Earth’s core inexplicably stops rotating—threatening to destroy all life as we know it due to the collapsing magnetic field. To fix it, a group of scientists are tasked with burrowing under the crust and nuking the core in order to get it to start spinning again.
It was a truly ridiculous and convoluted story even by Hollywood standards. But it turns out, there might be some truth to the idea that the Earth’s core can stop or change its rotation—and even result in some weird effects here on the surface.
An international team of researchers have discovered evidence that suggests that the Earth’s inner core may have recently stopped before reversing its rotation. While it might not destroy all life on the planet, the reversal might result in some changes to Earth’s own rotation. A paper of the study was published Jan. 23 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
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