EARTH's CORE

VARIATION IN EARTH CORE ALTERS DAY LENGTH EVERY 5.9 Years

Periodic jumps generated in earth core change the length of a day every 5.9 years on our planet. Researchers at University of Liverpool in UK studied the variation and fluctuation in the length of a day over 1 to 10 year period between 1962 and 2012.

They found that variation in the length of a day is caused by processes in the Earth’s core.

The Earth rotates once in day, but the length of this day varies. A year 300 million years ago, lasted about 450 days and a day would last about 21 hours, researchers said. As a result of the slowing down of the earth’s rotation the length of the day increased.

The study took account of the effects on the earth’s rotation of atmospheric and oceanic processes to produce a model of the variation in the length of day on time scales longer than a year.