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Measurements of the magnetic field at the earth’s surface can tell only so much about the dynamo producing the field in the planet’s core. UC Berkeley geophysicist Bruce Buffett has now used precise astronomical position data to calculate tidal damping in the core and determine for the first time the magnetic field in the center of the planet. The measurement, 25 Gauss, is in the middle of what various scientists have predicted.
Tag: geophysics
Using neutrinos to probe Earth’s hot core
July 18, 2011:
UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab physicists are part of a large international collaboration, called KamLAND, that used a neutrino detector in Japan to learn about the sources of heat in Earth’s interior. According to Stuart Freedman, the results indicate that only half the heat comes from radioactive decay; the rest from other processes.
High pressure experiments reproduce mineral structures 1,800 miles deep
September 23, 2010:
UC Berkeley and Yale University scientists have recreated the tremendous pressures and high temperatures deep in the Earth to resolve a long-standing puzzle: why some seismic waves travel faster than others through the boundary between the solid mantle and fluid outer core.
