image: This is an artist's view of the different layers of the Earth with their representative temperatures: crust, upper and lower mantle (brown to red), outer core (orange), and solid iron core (yellow). The pressure at the border between liquid and solid core (highlighted) is 3.3 million atmospheres. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the April 26, 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Simone Anzellini at French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Arpajon, France, and colleagues was titled, "Melting of Iron at Earth's Inner Core Boundary Based on Fast X-ray Diffraction." view more
Credit: [Image courtesy of ESRF]