SCEINTISTS have been left stunned by a staggering discovery after a study suggested that the Earth's core is in an ultra-rare ‘superionic' state.
This means that the blue planet's inner core has a strange composition of elements that make it both solid and liquid at the same time. The core is a 1,220-kilometre (760 mi) ball buried deep beneath the Earth's crust. It was thought that the inner core was solid and composed mostly of iron, which provides a magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation.
But now, new research has suggested that the mixture of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon makes it neither a solid nor a liquid.
This is called the "superionized" state, another state of matter such as a solid, liquid, or gas, but with special differences.
The study by researchers from the Institute of Geochemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGCAS) was published in the journal Nature.
The research paper reads: "We find that hydrogen, oxygen and carbon in hexagonal close-packed iron converge to a superionic state under inner core conditions, showing high diffusion coefficients like liquid.
"This suggests that the inner core may be in a superionic state rather than a normal solid state."
The team used computer simulations to work out how seismic waves might travel through certain combinations of elements.
By measuring these giant vibrations, scientists have been able to reconstruct the processes going on deep inside our planet.
He also incorporated quantum mechanics theory to help explain how atoms and particles react at the microscopic level.
They were able to create simulations that mimic the intense levels of core pressure and high temperatures.
They found that the iron atoms were "solid" but that the molecules of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen produced a liquid-like element.