Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA — Scientists say that the Earth tipped sideways in relation to the sun a few million years ago, but then it tipped back up again, like a giant yo-yo. Here are the details:
Live Science reports that a new study has confirmed a longstanding theory that the Earth’s crust was tilted on its side around 84 million years ago.
The research paper was published online on June 15 in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers looked at rock samples containing fossilized bacteria that lived millions of years ago.
These special bacteria can create chains of tiny magnetite crystals, which naturally orient with Earth's magnetic field at the time of their creation.
When these particular bacteria died and were fossilized, these magnetite chains got locked in place.
By studying these data points, the scientists found that the Earth’s crust had slowly slipped off its molten core.
The molten core kept on spinning at the same angle to the sun, and kept on creating the same magnetic field, but the crust moved as much as 12 degrees from the magnetic poles, before slowly moving back over a period of 5 million years.
The scientists say this process, called True Pole Wander, was so gradual that it would not have caused any major tectonic changes.
The researchers wrote in their paper: “This observation represents the most recent large-scale True Pole Wander, and it challenges the notion that the Earth's spin axis has been largely stable over the past 100 million years.”
SOURCES: Live Science, Nature Communications
livescience.com/earth-tipped-on-side-and-back-again
nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23803-8?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100052172&utm_content=deeplink
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA — Scientists say that the Earth tipped sideways in relation to the sun a few million years ago, but then it tipped back up again, like a giant yo-yo. Here are the details:
Live Science reports that a new study has confirmed a longstanding theory that the Earth’s crust was tilted on its side around 84 million years ago.
The research paper was published online on June 15 in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers looked at rock samples containing fossilized bacteria that lived millions of years ago.
These special bacteria can create chains of tiny magnetite crystals, which naturally orient with Earth's magnetic field at the time of their creation.
When these particular bacteria died and were fossilized, these magnetite chains got locked in place.
By studying these data points, the scientists found that the Earth’s crust had slowly slipped off its molten core.
The molten core kept on spinning at the same angle to the sun, and kept on creating the same magnetic field, but the crust moved as much as 12 degrees from the magnetic poles, before slowly moving back over a period of 5 million years.
The scientists say this process, called True Pole Wander, was so gradual that it would not have caused any major tectonic changes.
The researchers wrote in their paper: “This observation represents the most recent large-scale True Pole Wander, and it challenges the notion that the Earth's spin axis has been largely stable over the past 100 million years.”
SOURCES: Live Science, Nature Communications
livescience.com/earth-tipped-on-side-and-back-again
nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23803-8?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100052172&utm_content=deeplink
