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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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In Our Time

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Factual: History

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Melvyn Bragg

Stephen Blundell

Arwen Deuss

Simon Redfern

Simon Tillotson

In Our Time: The Earth's Core

The Earth's Core

30/04/2015

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Earth's Core

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Earth's core.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Earth's solid inner core and liquid outer core, their structures and their impact on life on Earth.

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Earth's Core. The inner core is an extremely dense, solid ball of iron and nickel, the size of the Moon, while the outer core is a flowing liquid, the size of Mars. Thanks to the magnetic fields produced within the core, life on Earth is possible. The magnetosphere protects the Earth from much of the Sun's radiation and the flow of particles which would otherwise strip away the atmosphere. The precise structure of the core and its properties have been fascinating scientists from the Renaissance. Recent seismographs show the picture is even more complex than we might have imagined, with suggestions that the core is spinning at a different speed and on a different axis from the surface.

With

Stephen Blundell
Professor of Physics and Fellow of Mansfield College at the University of Oxford

Arwen Deuss
Associate Professor in Seismology at Utrecht University

and

Simon Redfern
Professor of Mineral Physics at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

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