Santiago Andrés Triana
The Earth's Free Core Nutation (#FCN) motion is essentially a slight misalignment between the mantle's spin axis and the fluid core spin axis (I greatly exaggerated it here for ease of visualization). The camera starts in an inertial reference frame and slowly moves to the mantle's frame. As seen from the mantle the core seems to wobble!
This is all caused by the Earth's slow #precession. The fluid core lags a bit resulting in a small misalignment.
#Earth #Core #Science #Geophysics #Nutation
Sep 1, 2023 at 10:10amWeb
Show threadSantiago Andrés TrianaSep 1, 2023
For the observant: I used the Cosmic Microwave Background (abbreviated as CMB by cosmologists) map as a texture for the Core-Mantle Boundary (a abbreviated also as CMB by planetary physicists). Confused?
Cosmologists stole the acronym, so I steal their map.
#CMB #Physics #Science #Earth
Show threadDeb has moved! (see profile) 🇨🇦Sep 1, 2023
@repepo interesting. Itcs hard to tell: is the core moving counter to the spin of the planet?
Show threadSantiago Andrés TrianaSep 1, 2023
@deborahh not really, the core is very much spinning the same way as the rest of the planet, only around at a slightly different axis. That is what makes it like wobbling up and down towards the end of the animation.