Scientists believe that the Earth's inner core may be filled with a weird substance that is a mushy mix of solid and liquid, a bombshell new study has revealed.
The latest research published earlier this month claims that our planet's core may be made from substances other than a molten outer core surrounding a densely compressed ball of solid iron alloy as previously theorised.
The study's computer simulations suggest that Earth's hot and highly pressurized inner core could be a mix of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon molecules, existing in a "superionic state" through a lattice of iron, Live Science reports.
The study published on February 9 in Nature reads: "We find that hydrogen, oxygen and carbon in hexagonal close-packed iron transform to a superionic state under the inner core conditions, showing high diffusion coefficients like a liquid.
"This suggests that the inner core can be in a superionic state rather than a normal solid-state."
The planet's centre is believed to be as hot as the surface of the sun but what it is made up of has baffled experts since the earliest studies of earthquakes in the 1950s.
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But it is advancements in the studies of these seismic waves that have allowed researchers to make more refined guesses as to what's inside the Earth – but even now we don't know for sure.
The news comes a geophysicist found “compelling evidence” that Saturn's death star moon could be home to an entire ocean, just below the surface.
According to Alyssa Rhoden from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, Saturn's smallest moon Mimas houses a “stealth ocean world, after data from NASA's Cassini probe was analysed.
It is believed that the new research could hint that the search for life on other planets is bearing fruit.
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