Earth's Iron Core Reversing Its Rotation? What does EU think ?

[Maol]

Seems there is agreement it does this, but a disagreement about how often. Is the Iron core acting as a homopolar motor and responding to the Sun's magnetic field reversal every eleven years?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... veals.html

[Cargo]

Clearly a data interruption problem, as no one really has poodoo clue what's happening 3,000 miles inside the earth.
But, apparently, the actual paper states that the 'inner core' is not 'reversing rotation', but only sometimes, in a cycle, slighty slower or faster then the 'crust' rotations speed.
The mainstream hype title not withstanding, the cycle they found, regardless of the 'core' are interesting irt to the solar cycles.

[jacmac]

It generally seems to me that if the earths core rotation reversed, the disruption to the normal events
of the planet would be on a larger scale than a micro change of the day length.
But, It is good that the sun is being considered as a cause, as Cargo says.

[Dotini]

Geophysicist Hrvoje Tkalcic is mentioned in the CNN story as favoring a 20-30 year cycle. This at least is closer the Sun's cycle.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/world/ea ... index.html

[spark]

Earth's Spinning Inner Core Recently Paused Then Flipped Its Direction? Not Really, Here's The Truth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmEGLrL7jNw

[BeAChooser]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Core

[JPeterS]

Is Earth’s iron core reversing its rotation.

Some thoughts
The short answer...no it isn’t.

And a longer answer… please bear with me.

I am sure I will be saying things that are blindingly obvious and have been discussed here many times, but I have a different perspective that I would like to share.

As I understand the conventional view on geomagnetism, it is taken as a fact (from Faraday’s ice pail experiments) that charges on conductors always reside on the outside of conductors. As the Earth is a conductor any charges on the Earth will be on the outside of the Earth. Therefore as the Earth has a strong geomagnetic field, there must be a source of magnetism within the Earth.

The consensus is that the magnetic field is generated by electric currents that  are the result of the motion of convection currents  in the Earth's outer conducting molten iron/nickel core. These convection currents are caused by heat escaping from the core.

This explanation is however fraught with difficulties. The temperature of the outer core is between 2700oC and 4200oC. So with a Curie temperature of Nickel at 354oC and Iron of 770oC, a ferromagnetic source for the Earths field is just not on. However a paramagnetic source cannot be ruled out. But again there are problems. For strong para-magnetism to develop there has to be a source magnetic field that paramagnetic atoms can align with. The temperature of the outer core is very hot. And para magnetism is known to reduce with increasing temperature. Can we really expect a strong paramagnetic field to develop in these conditions? There is also the problem of convection in the outer core. The model makes use of strong thermal convection within the core to produce the required electromagnetism. However recent investigations have shown that heat flow from the core to the mantle has a far greater conductive component than was previously thought. The corollary of this is that convection currents will be slower and the required paramagnetic field is even less likely to be achieved.

So is there another way of explaining the Earths geomagnetic field?

Maybe there is. And we need to go back to first principles. Right back to when we learned that like charges repel each other.

Imagine a conducting sphere. If it is electrically charged, then because of their mutual repulsion, all the charges reside on the outside of that sphere. This is considered incontrovertible fact, since Faraday demonstrated this to be the case with his Ice Pail experiments.

But there is a long ignored problem.

The sphere is a three dimensional object and charges move in three dimensional space. So why would charges (electrons) crowd themselves together on a two dimensional surface???

Imagine putting electrons one by one on the outside of a circle that is a cross section through the centre of a sphere. You don’t have to put many electrons on the outside before it is perfectly obvious that the next subsequent electron should go somewhere inside the circle to achieve the lowest energy state of the system.

I like to imagine a crowded beach. People don’t like being close together. Think of it as a repulsive force between them. To solve their mutual repulsion, people spread themselves out all over the beach. They don’t crowd together around its edges.

And charges shouldn’t be crowding on a sphere’s surface.

There is also proof positive that charges don’t reside on the outside of conductors.

Just imagine a long cylindrical copper conducting wire with a potential difference between the ends and current flowing through it. This current is largely carried by excess electrons coming in at one end and exiting at the other end of the wire. During their passage according to the ‘excess charges reside on the outside of a conductor rule’ these charges should be on the outside of the conductor. One would presume, if this were the case, that the wire should be a superconductor, because the electrons carrying the current could scoot across the surface of the wire. In reality, of course this is not the case. The current has to make its way through the wire that has a specific resistance to current flow depending on the material from which it is made.

What has this got to do with the Earth’s magnetic field?

Well there is good reasoning to suppose that in spite of long held opinion, excess charges on conductors do not reside on the outside of conductors. So the charges must be somewhere on the inside of charged conductors But where?

If excess charges on a conducting sphere are considered to be dynamic quantum processes, consisting of pairs of quantum electrons, it is possible to calculate a quasi stationary distribution of charge. This distribution is such that there is zero charge at the centre of the sphere and an increasing amount of charge towards the outside of the sphere.

The result of this distribution is that it opens the door to the magnetic field of the Earth being generated by the movement of charges within the Earth. The rotation of the Earth would produce a strong dipole component. Geomagnetic reversals can then be explained by charges in/on the Earth cycling from positive to negative, depending on solar and galactic electrical events. The fact that geomagnetic reversals take place when the Earth’s magnetic field is weak is an obvious given with this model.

The complex non-dipole constituents of the field will be the result of charge movement in the various layers of the Earth’s interior and atmosphere.

So is the Earth’s core reversing its rotation? Well not in this model. The current, (excuse the pun) continuing reduction in the Earth’s magnetic field strength is likely to be due to the present charge on the Earth being slowly reduced due to a net influx of neutralising charges from solar and cosmic events. Whether this reduction in the strength of the geomagnetic field will eventually result in a geomagnetic reversal, I don’t think anyone knows. But we do know that a geomagnetic reversal is well overdue.