Posted on 12/23/2016 10:21:45 AM PST by tired&retired
Anyone watching a compass needle point steadily north might suppose that Earth’s magnetic field is a constant. It’s not. Researchers have long known that changes are afoot. The north magnetic pole routinely moves, as much as 40 km/yr, causing compass needles to drift over time. Moreover, the global magnetic field has weakened 10% since the 19th century.
Earth’s magnetic field protects us from solar storms and cosmic rays. Less magnetism means more radiation can penetrate our planet’s atmosphere. Indeed, high altitude balloons launched by Spaceweather.com routinely detect increasing levels of cosmic rays over California. Perhaps the ebbing magnetic field over North America contributes to that trend.
As remarkable as these changes sound, they’re mild compared to what Earth’s magnetic field has done in the past. Sometimes the field completely flips, with north and the south poles swapping places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago. Are we overdue for another? No one knows.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.spaceweather.com ...
Higher taxes will be the solution.
And coincidentally the causes of and solutions for Magnetic Field Change will be almost the same as those for Global Warming.
Exactly they are doing a poor job of physics and science as they just can’t seem to admit that the forces are too great and there is absolutely nothing that can be done.
Excellent!
Every 1st-year geology student understands magnetic pole reversals.
Not sure where you are located, but I live in Idaho and I can see Polaris every clear night when I walk the doggies.
Interesting
Trump’s fault...
I see what looks like ocean temperatures but what are the lines that look like an orbit?
We are all going to die! We should have listened top the fat grand wizard, algore.
Just like carbon. There’s too many magnets. We need magnet control
“Higher taxes will be the solution.”
Well duh! That is the solution to all that is wrong. Give our beloved politicians more money cause they are universally know for their wisdom and frugality.
Polaris is our North Star now, and is visible in the northern hemisphere. Precession has caused the North Star to change over tens of thousands of years, and the previous North Star, Vega, is not always visible to all in the north.
Magnetic north is a different thing altogether, and has moved and flipped many times.
The biggest thing about this is to buy lots of zinc sunscreen to help block the increase in cosmic rays that a reduced magnetic field will allow. And backup all your computer memories as cosmic rays degrade those, too.
The effect is caused by the non-concentricity of the Earth and its magnetic dipole. The SAA is the near-Earth region where the Earth's magnetic field is weakest relative to an idealized Earth-centered dipole field.
A cross-sectional view of the Van Allen radiation belts, noting the point where the South Atlantic Anomaly occurs
Intensity of the magnetic field in the center of the South Atlantic Anomaly, 1840 to 2020.
Area of the South Atlantic Anomaly, 1840 to 2020.
Forgot your Sarcasm tag. Someone might actually believe you. ;-)
The highest intensity portion of the SAA drifts to the west at a speed of about 0.3 degrees per year, and is noticeable in the references listed below. The drift rate of the SAA is very close to the rotation differential between the Earth’s core and its surface, estimated to be between 0.3 and 0.5 degrees per year.
Current literature suggests that a slow weakening of the geomagnetic field is one of several causes for the changes in the borders of the SAA since its discovery. As the geomagnetic field continues to weaken, the inner Van Allen belt gets closer to the Earth, with a commensurate enlargement of the SAA at given altitudes.
This is what I told the physicists back in the early 1990’s as it all came to me in a vision and was explained to me.
Totally not scientific at all. It seems the red corresponds to nations, areas that are still relatively sane, white areas nations that are confused and blue to the ones that are out and out nuts.
Astronauts are also affected by this region, which is said to be the cause of peculiar “shooting stars” (phosphenes) seen in the visual field of astronauts, an effect termed the cosmic ray visual phenomena.[
Passing through the South Atlantic Anomaly is thought to be the reason for the early failures of the Globalstar network’s satellites.
The PAMELA experiment, while passing through the SAA, detected antiproton levels that were orders of magnitude higher than expected. This suggests the Van Allen belt confines antiparticles produced by the interaction of the Earth’s upper atmosphere with cosmic rays.
NASA has reported that modern laptops have crashed when Space Shuttle flights passed through the anomaly.
In October 2012, the SpaceX CRS-1 Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station experienced a transient problem as it passed through the anomaly.
The SAA is believed to have started a series of events leading to the destruction of the Hitomi, Japan’s most powerful X-ray observatory. The anomaly transiently disabled a direction-finding mechanism, causing the satellite to fall back on gyroscopes that were not working properly, after which it spun itself apart.
“My former wife was dipolar.”
LOL... Mine too
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