{"id":136612,"date":"2022-03-11T00:40:32","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T08:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/the-iron-of-earths-inner-core-could-be-in-a-strange-superionic-state-study-finds"},"modified":"2022-03-11T00:40:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T08:40:32","slug":"the-iron-of-earths-inner-core-could-be-in-a-strange-superionic-state-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/the-iron-of-earths-inner-core-could-be-in-a-strange-superionic-state-study-finds","title":{"rendered":"The Iron of Earth\u2019s Inner Core Could Be in a Strange \u2018Superionic\u2019 State, Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-iron-of-earths-inner-core-could-be-in-a-strange-superionic-state-study-finds2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Deep below the crust of Earth, past the thick mantle and liquid outer core, lies a 1,220-kilometer (760 mile) ball of solid inner core.<\/p>\n<p>But a new study has suggested that the inner core is not solid at all, instead forming a \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superionic_water\">superionic state\u2019<\/a> with hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, making it unlike either a liquid or a solid.<\/p>\n<p>We can\u2019t exactly drill down the 6,371 km (3,959 miles) to the center of the Earth to check what\u2019s going on, so scientists use Earth\u2019s natural drill \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/planet-earth\/how-we-know-whats-deep-inside-the-earth-despite-never-traveling-there\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seismic waves from earthquakes<\/a> \u2013 to understand the composition of our planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deep below the crust of Earth, past the thick mantle and liquid outer core, lies a 1,220-kilometer (760 mile) ball of solid inner core. But a new study has suggested that the inner core is not solid at all, instead forming a \u2018superionic state\u2019 with hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, making it unlike either a liquid [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}