Intelligent Earth
What would happen if the Earth’s axis suddenly tilted by 50 degrees or more? It may sound like the plot of a bad science fiction movie, but scientists say it’s not an academic question — geological records show such shifts have happened several times throughout the planet’s history, with dramatic effects on climate and sea level. Harvard researchers are now answering one of the key questions related to such shifts: Once its axis tilts, how does the Earth “know” to return to its normal orientation? As described in a Nature report, Jessica Creveling, a former Harvard grad student and now a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Harvard Professor of Geophysics Jerry X. Mitrovica worked with colleagues on research suggesting that these events — known as true polar wander — may have been caused by “pulses” of convection in the Earth’s mantle below the surface, with the resulting...