--- title: Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core | TIME description: Scientists used information from seismic events like earthquakes to probe the center of the Earth, and may have found an inner inner core. canonical: https://time.com/video/C7bMQVMl/ og:title: Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core og:description: Scientists used information from seismic events like earthquakes to probe the center of the Earth, and may have found an inner inner core. og:url: https://time.com/video/C7bMQVMl/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/C7bMQVMl/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core twitter:description: Scientists used information from seismic events like earthquakes to probe the center of the Earth, and may have found an inner inner core. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/C7bMQVMl/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core [Watch (HLS stream): Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/C7bMQVMl.m3u8) (1:26)  _Published 2015-02-11. Scientists used information from seismic events like earthquakes to probe the center of the Earth, and may have found an inner inner core._ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:55 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Asteroids Are Slamming Into Earth Twice as Much as Before, Scientists Say](/video/m2t8SP0V/) ### Asteroids Are Slamming Into Earth Twice as Much as Before, Scientists Say [Scientists Say They've Found What Could Be the Oldest Life on Earth](/video/zKj9g8bx/) ### Scientists Say They've Found What Could Be the Oldest Life on Earth [Watch: Godzilla Earth Found](/video/OAJ1lRxy/) ### Watch: Godzilla Earth Found --- ## Transcript If you were to venture down through Earth's many layers to the very center of the planet, you'd find some interesting things. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the center of the Earth. You almost certainly wouldn't find Brendan Fraser, although if you did, it would explain a lot. No instead you'd find the earth's inner core, a super hot and super compressed ball of iron smaller than the moon which helps generate the earth's magnetic field and by extension, the aurora borealis. But scientists now think there's more to it than that. Researchers think they've found an inner, inner core. Iron at the earth's core forms into crystals. The scientists found within the inner core, there's another region where the crystals don't line up with the rest of the inner core. Specifically while the inner core's crystals are lined up North to South. The inner, inner core's crystals line up East to West. The discovery could shed light on not only how exactly the Earth's core works but also how the core and the Earth itself developed billions of years ago. Obviously, scientists aren't able to actually drill to the center of the Earth. The Earth to see the core and confirm their findings. That would entail some 4, 000 miles of digging withstanding millions of atmospheres of pressure, thousands of degrees Kelvin of heat, and of course, Brendan Fraser. So, instead, geologists tend to use seismological data, measuring how waves of energy generated by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions traveled through the Earth's layers. The researchers measured the ways those different seismic waves were distorted as they traveled to establish the orientation of the iron crystals. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Scientists Find Possible Inner Inner Earth Core","description":"Scientists used information from seismic events like earthquakes to probe the center of the Earth, and may have found an inner inner core.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/C7bMQVMl/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-02-11T16:16:49.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/C7bMQVMl.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/C7bMQVMl/","duration":"PT1M26S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/C7bMQVMl/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```