repepo, 8 months ago to science

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

Animation showing a slight misalignment between the mantle's spin axis and the fluid core spin axis (greatly exaggerated here for ease of visualization). The camera starts in an inertial reference frame and slowly shifts to the mantle's frame. As seen from the mantle the core seems to wobble.