A recent major discovery identified a massive liquid iron “jet stream” circling the Earth’s outer core that appears to be accelerating. This comparatively fast flowing liquid iron stream is currently moving westward under Alaska and Siberia as measured by the Swarm satellites and recently published in Nature Geoscience.
The iron jet is moving at about 50 km per year, orders of magnitude faster than plates move and much faster than anything scientists knew of within Earth’s interior. Traveling at 50 km per year doesn’t seem rather fast compared to speeds on the surface of the Earth. However, consider the tremendous amount of energy required to push aside dense liquid metal under very high pressures across hundreds of miles. In addition, it appears that this liquid jet stream is accelerating but scientists have not determined what is causing the acceleration.
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