Right beneath our feet, the Earth's core is doing something strange: it's growing more and more lopsided. But how?
A new study by seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley, surmised that the core's mass accumulation has a lot to do with heat dissipation:
The scientists say dissipating heat likely explains why the east Indonesia side is adding more iron crystals so much more rapidly. Those crystals form and are moved quickly into and toward the rest of the core, creating horizontally packed structures that explain the slower east-west seismic waves compared with the faster north-south seismic waves. Packed crystals are waiting in east-west queue lines that leave little room for seismic activity to pass through.
The dissipating heat is likely due to Indonesia being covered by a huge mix of islands and expansive sea floor, which is a key place where molten materials shed heat from inside the Earth. On the western end, Brazil is part of the gigantic land mass of South America, leaving little space for the rapid cooling effect of the sea floor.