How scientists scan Earth's core without digging

A closer look

Jules Verne thought we had to physically journey to the center of the Earth to see it, which is embarrassing when you realize you can just use cosmic radiation. Neutrinos are nearly massless ghost particles that pass straight through almost everything. But the IceCube observatory in Antarctica utilizes the fact that Earth's hyper-dense inner iron core absorbs slightly more neutrinos than the mantle. By measuring the 'shadow' of missing neutrinos passing through the planet, physicists literally CAT-scan the Earth's core.