2001 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 198-203
We detected the Free Core Nutation (FCN) directly and revealed the time variation of FCN from the analysis of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) observation for the period 1979.9-2000.1. We developed the model of the FCN which consider both the energy dissipation due to the viscosity of fluid core and the magnetic coupling of core-mantle boundary and the excitations during the observation period. From the analysis of VLBI data, we discovered that the FCN is of the damped oscillation which had 4 significant excitations at 1989.90 ± 0.40, 1994.47±0.40, 1994.76±0.40, and 1998.99±0.40. And then these epochs roughly coincide with the occurrence of some huge earthquakes, namely whose amplitude are bigger than Mw 8.0.