A big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff (here). From The Register:
Earth's core is younger than its crust
Back in the early 1960s, physicist Richard Feynman remarked that the centre of the Earth had to be a little younger than the crust, since it would experience gravitational time dilation.
Now, boffins from two Danish universities have put a value to that difference, and while they agree with his hypothesis, they've corrected his estimate of the difference: while Feynman thought it would be “a couple of days”, a full calculation suggests it's two-and-a-half years.
The paper is here at Arxiv and has been accepted by the European Journal of Physics.
Very cool. To see an example of gravitational time dialation, check out local (Redmond, WA) time-nut Tom Van Baak's expedition to Mt Lemmon, Arizona for the television show Genius hosted by Steven Hawking. (first link is a short description, second is the photo album)
Leave a comment