Environmental News

That faulty PM article is accompanied by "Related Stories" links, one of which describes some of this:
Earth Has a Secret Hidden Layer: What's in Earth's Inner Core?

I can't vouch for total accuracy, but the multi-layer core model, solid inner and liquid outer layers, is the current understanding. They cannot keep spinning in opposite directions, the mechanical and viscous friction would probably release enough heat to keep the whole planet molten, until friction forces everything to settle to the same direction, or nearly so. Conservation of angular momentum would mean that the settled spin rate of the end result would be less than the initial spin rates of the counter-rotating parts. But astronomically speaking, I haven't heard of any concepts of planet formation that could create initially counter-rotating parts. Colliding galaxies and gaseous stars are a different matter, and the results will not be "gentle".

I have heard a hypotheses that the core and crust do spin at different rates, but the suggested difference is tiny, as in a few degrees of rotation difference per century. No followup noticed.

 

Here are the links, one lead to another and so on and so forth.
Weyl Fermion: Long-Sought Massless Particle Finally Observed | Physics | Sci-News.com
Geoscientists Confirm Existence of Earth’s Innermost Inner Core | Geoscience | Sci-News.com


sometimes I don't have much of anything to followup.

 

"Party on Garth". Also archaic.

 

At the HOP **

wishful thinking for some. Not expecting much to change afterwards, at least not in this world.

 

The internal heat flowing up to Earth's surface is on the order of 0.1 w/m^2. I'm having great difficultly imagining any sort of bearing between counter-rotating planet parts that could be sufficiently low friction to produce heat rates anywhere near that low. Or even low enough to not be burning the soles of our feet.

As for the core and crust possibly having different spin rates, I'm finding the claims to be sufficiently varied and sparse that all could be considered outliers. This one suggests the core spinning about 1°/year faster than the crust, but others suggest differences on the order of 0.1° to 0.000001°/year.

 

This might have been mentioned in this thread or elsewhere.

On one hand, a recent NYT article celebrating the recovery of the bald eagle population in the US from a blink of extinction by very strong conservation efforts. And on the recent issue of the Science cover article, the scientists finally discovered the cause of a devastating disease attacking the bald eagle population in the last 20+ years.

Original Science paper here: Hunting the eagle killer: A cyanobacterial neurotoxin causes vacuolar myelinopathy | Science

The articles were very timely for us having seen a pair of resident bald eagles looking for a nesting site in our back yard. Yeah, the photo below was taken in my backyard from the deck using a normal lens. We have seen a pair of birds within 10-20 feet of our house. It would be very exciting tenants to have on our property, but their presence would make it impossible to keep our flock of chickens and ducks free-ranging. Hmmm, any idea someone?

 

Yeah, that's true. But we already have plenty of wild turkeys roaming around on our property.

 

Well, they didn't get so plentiful by being easy to lift.

 

Our chickens are neither broilers nor layers. They are considered to be dual-purpose breeds. Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Orpington, Austalorp, Wyandotte to name a few. But we only have females, although we also have ornamental bantam silkies that we got chicks as straight run and ended up with both roosters and hens.

 

A more recent study:

Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice inland, but still losing it overall.