Published May 12, 1956
| public
Journal Article
Damping of the Earth's Free Nutation
- Creators
- Gutenberg, B.
Chicago
Abstract
The 'free nutation' of the Earth is a motion of the Earth's instantaneous axis of rotation around its mean position. The poles (intersections of the axis with the Earth's surface) describe changing orbits with the 'Chandler period' of about fourteen months. Every six or seven years the amplitude of these orbits reaches a maximum of up to ten metres and then decreases almost to zero. Following Jeffreys, Bondi and Gold have considered that the free nutation has a characteristic damping time of the order of ten periods. They find that such heavy damping cannot arise from internal motion of the core or from relative motion between core and mantle, and conclude that it results from non-elastic behaviour of the mantle.
Additional Information
© 1956 Nature Publishing Group.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 49934
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140923-103729991
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2014-09-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field