Posted on 05/01/2018 8:06:25 AM PDT by BenLurkin
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today (April 30), researchers ... found that today's patterns don't resemble the two most extreme disruptions in the past 50,000 years, when the magnetic field nearly reversed. [7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye]
Instead, the modern field appears similar to the field during two other periods — one 49,000 ago, and one 46,000 years ago — when the field wobbled but didn't flip-flop.
... Currently, magnetic north is very close to the North Pole, while magnetic south is near the South Pole. That's been the case for about 780,000 years — the last time the geomagnetic field underwent a complete reversal, with magnetic north and south swapping places. But the field has been weakening by about 5 percent per century since direct observations started in 1840, and indirect observations hint that this weakening might have been going on for at least 2,000 years, Maxwell Brown, who studies paleomagnetism at the University of Iceland, and his colleagues wrote in their new paper. A particularly weak area called the South Atlantic Anomaly, which stretches from South Africa to Chile, has been pinpointed as a potential ground zero for a global polarity reversal.
Brown and his colleagues wanted to compare today's conditions with the magnetic field of years past. They focused on two "excursions," which are major disruptions of the geomagnetic field that don't necessarily involve a global reversal of magnetic north and south. One, the Laschamp excursion, occurred about 41,000 years ago. During that excursion, the magnetic field was a complex muddle without a clear magnetic north and south. The other, the Mono Lake excursion, happened about 34,000 years ago and was marked by a very weak magnetic north and south.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
More winning!
So its safe to leave my bunker?
Well, that’s a relief.
awwwww but I was promised an apocalypse...
Yay! We’re not all gonna die after all.
Yes, but only for brief periods of time.
Sounds to me like not flipping is worse. Flipping would mean a strong field, but in the opposite direction. Not flipping means little or no field at all and we’re all fried by cosmic rays and UV.
When’s the last time you used a compass?
Just curious.
Even if you did use them, and the poles switched, how hard would it be to find the new north? Would you need a decoder ring when the S points where the N used to be? lol
Whew. One less thing to prep for.
You’ll know the poles flipped when you come home and see a bunch of paper around the floor of your refrigerator and all the magnets picture side in.
Our magnetic field does a lot more than just give us directions. We would fry without it.
Animals also rely on the magnetic field.
Dummy! They would be upside down.
Why Monkeys Might Not Come Out Of My Butt After All.
The lull could be a thousand years.
I tried the map and didn’t get to the finish lol.
“The lull could be a thousand years.”
~~~
Could be.
But I doubt it.
I’m no rocket scientist. Okay. But if the earth is still spinning (once a day) and it still has that iron core, it seems like the forces are still in place to generate that field.
No, something tells me that the ‘lull’ that are showing in minerals or where every they measure the magentic field in the past are a spot phenomenon. So yeah, just because the iron in some magma at a specific position on the globe didn’t get influenced in a north-south orientation for 50 years only means that the field wasn’t generating unified polarity and position over that time. It doesn’t mean the field stopped existing.
“Flipping would mean a strong field”
During the Laschamp event 41000 years ago the reversal lasted over 400 years at a 25% normal strength.
During the transition of several hundred years it was at 5%.
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