Earth’s Core is Younger Than It’s Surface

This is all going to sound a bit confusing, so stay with me…

Before we get to that magical title seen above, let’s go back a little bit a reflect on Einstein’s theory of relativity. This theory was developed in the light of time travel, which proved that such an action was possible to perform under the right circumstances. Traveling at or near the speed of light is believed to be one of the many possible ways of traveling to the past and especially the future. This means that depending on how fast you actually travel, time will begin to dilate, slowing down your own clock while time at the current moment will remain the same. So when you think about it, people around you will begin to age faster as you travel faster and faster in time. Gravity also plays a big role in keeping you younger than others as you move through the past and present thanks to variations in the gravitational pull being forced on to you as you travel at such a high speed as the speed of light (186,000 mph). Weird, right? And hey, even though no one has ever successfully time traveled before, we do have some proof that time dilation does occur. As Outer Places points out,

For instance, GPS satellites have to take time dilation into account to correct their onboard clocks, as they are obviously much further away from the Earth and thus experience time dilation due to gravity to a differing degree than objects on the surface of the planet.

So by now, you’re probably like, “Wow. That’s really cool!” Well, here’s something cooler. A team of physicists recently discovered that the Earth’s core is actually younger than its surface. How is this possible? … What was that? … Did you say “time dilation?” … You’re correct!

See, these physicists went out to find the time differential that would exist between the surface of the Earth and it’s core due to time dilation. Richard Feynman, a famous American physicist, would speak about this in many of his lectures and calculated that the time difference between the surface and core of Earth is around 100 days. However, the group of physicists discovered that this is indeed false and that the core of Earth actually experiences slower time than the surface of the planet by about 0.0000000003 seconds. This may not seem like a lot at first, however since this world is believed to have been formed 4.5 billion years ago, over time this rate takes over and really adds up. In fact, if you do the math (which you really shouldn’t because it’s a pain in the neck to do), it comes out to be about 1.5 years. However, if you add in the fact that the variations in density between the center and the surface are always fluctuating, the math comes out to be about 2.5 years. This ultimately means that Earth’s core is 2.5 years younger than its surface.

This big, confusing ball of “rules” and “math” doesn’t only apply to the Earth, no. These same physicists also discovered that the sun’s core is 40,000 years younger than its surface. 2.5 years doesn’t seem like a lot now, does it?

Anyway, this is really interesting to see/read about. It’s not every day you learn such a significant fact as this. But think, something created at the same exact moment in time experiences two different ages at once. And I mean, who doesn’t like the idea of time travel even if they think it’s not possible? We have proof that time dilation is here, it’s real, and it’s not going away. It’s so real that our Earth is currently experiencing it right under out feet. Crazy, right?

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Source: Outer Places