image: The Earth globe, featuring a cube in place of the solid inner core. The cube big diagonal is oriented along the Earth's polar axis. It is a schematic illustration that Earth's inner core material is a body-centered cubic structure, as demonstrated in the paper. This structure is preferentially oriented as shown in the figure. This image relates to an article that appeared in the Feb. 8, 2008 issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS. The study, by Dr. Anatoly Belonoshk and colleagues at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, was titled "Elastic Anisotropy of Earth's Inner Core." view more
Credit: Image © Science