The
outer-core meteorites are a mixture of both, steel slabs with small formations of stone in them.
The group is to target its '
outer-core' businesses of desalination and machinery-handling for disposal, although acting chief executive Mr David Dundas stressed that there would be 'no fire sale' of assets.
Anchored in the core's fluid iron, these field lines follow the movement of the
outer-core currents.
Using magnetic observations spanning almost 300 years, Bloxham and colleague David Gubbins from Cambridge University created geomagnetic maps of the
outer-core convection patterns responsible for the magnetic field (SN: 4/4/87, p.222).
Now, scientists trying to understandthe inner earth may be helped as well by possible advances in two other geologic disciplines: the gravitational study of waves oscillating in the fluid outer-core and research on the earth's magnetic field, which is generated by the swirling motion of the outer-core fluids.
Ian Lumb, both at York University in Toronto, think these fluctuations in the gravity field were caused by "inertial waves,' or oscillations of the outer-core fluids, which redistributed the mass in the core and hence changed the reading on the Belgium gravimeter.