No Biggie: The Earth's Core May Have Stopped Spinning and Might Start Going Backwards, Bringing the End of All Things
In 2003, Hollywood was on the verge of running out of ways to destroy the Earth in a massive cataclysm. You know the kind. The ones that the likes of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich have made nice livings off of. Where the disaster always strikes iconic tourist attractions around the globe first. And where a plucky group of diverse scientists present the problem to incredulous bureaucrats who dismiss it as nonsense. And by the time they come around to believing it, there's only one solution left, and it involves nukes and a race against time. Or something.
So they came up with the only way to imperial this delicate little blue marble we call home that hadn't been tried yet. And they called it The Core. Tagline: "Earth has a deadline."
IMDB - The Earth's core has stopped spinning. Disasters are happening around the globe, including; animals acting in bizarre ways, monstrous thunderstorms. Dr. Josh Keyes and his crew of 5 go down to the centre to set off a nuclear device, hoping to make the core start spinning again, or humanity will cease.
See? Always with the brave scientists and the nukes.
The Core did not do well. It lost money at the box office. And it's Rotten Tomatoes critics and audience scores are only 39% and 35% respectively. Possibly because it's not very good. Perhaps because by 2003 the country was getting tired of watching the Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building get obliterated. Again. But most likely it might have stemmed from the idea of the out ultimate destruction coming down to the rotation of the chewy center of the chocolate we all live on is just so unrealistic. Unlike, say, city-sized spaceships shooting lasers down on us, or asteroids the size of Texas hurtling toward us. Those we could relate to. This premise just seems so preposterous.
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Well you'd better think again. You think you've noticed a big increase in weirdo animal stories and extreme weather happening? It might be for the very reason Aaron Eckhart and Hillary Swank were screaming at our generals about 20 years ago:
Source - The rotation of Earth’s inner core may have paused and it could even go into reverse, new research suggests.
The Earth is formed of the crust, the mantle and the inner and outer cores. The solid inner core is situated about 3,200 miles below the Earth’s crust and is separated from the semi-solid mantle by the liquid outer core, which allows the inner core to rotate at a different speed from the rotation of the Earth itself. …
In research published in the journal Nature Geoscience … [w]hat they found was unexpected, they said. Since 2009, seismic records, which previously changed over time, showed little difference. This, they said, suggested that the inner core rotation had paused.
“We show surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back,” they wrote in the study. …
[The researchers] argue that, based on their calculations, a small imbalance in the electromagnetic and gravitational forces could slow and even reverse the inner core’s rotation.
Welp. It's been nice knowing you.
Sure, the article quotes scientists who say there's nothing to worry about. And here's Professor Michio Kaku, every TV network's go-to when it comes to talking about the cosmos telling us not to lose sleep. But I'll keep my own counsel on what I want to panic about in the middle of the night. Besides, what else are they going to say? Do you think they'll give interviews repeating the stuff from that movie trailer? Boiling oceans. Entire continents getting flash-frozen like the ice cream in the blast chiller on The Great British Baking Show? Do we really expect them to be honest with us like Stanley Tucci here? Leveling with the public about cosmic radiation microwaving us and "literally cook our planet"? Then what? They just throw it to a commercial break where Gronk is trying to get a military discount on his insurance?
Like they said in movie, we're 100,000 years overdue for this. It's inevitable. Now our best equipment is telling us the process has already begun. Without that little ball of magma spinning the way it's supposed to, all bets are off. Nothing else is going to matter. Forget about seeing the second half of this season of Yellowstone. You might as well quit saving money. In fact, max out on your credit cards. Eat, drink and smoke whatever you want. Take some hits of DMT and Ayahuasca you've been hearing about. Quit recycling. Go ahead and throw that key party you and your neighbors have been joking about but everyone's waiting to see if anyone else is actually serious about it. You might as well find out if the Swinger Life is all it's cracked up to Because we're all living on borrowed time and the Doomsday Clock is down to a couple of minutes before the stroke of Extinction Level Event Midnight.
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After all, we're 100,000 years overdue. You have to admit, we had a good run. Time for the cockroaches to take over the planet. It was bound to happen sooner or later.