Magnetic Mysteries of Earth's Core

Admittedly the BBC article "Magnetic mysteries of Earth's core" might not, at first blush, seem like a materials article. We can't see, touch, or directly interact with the core. We can't make anything out of the core.

But we can test the core and can - as has Professor Kei Hirose of the article - test the core indirectly. Here Hirosa has recreated the temperature and pressure conditions thought to exist in the inner core, using a diamond-tipped vice to exert 3,000,000 atmospheres of pressure on a nickel-iron alloy being simultaneously heated to 4500 C.

At these conditions crystals within the alloy changed and apparently increased to drastic sizes, leading Hirose to propose that the core may include crystals up to 10km in size.