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The Earth's magnetic field is weakening, and that could lead to a flip in the planet's poles making compasses point south instead of north for the first time in almost a million years, say scientists.
I thought these things were supposed to happen with Y2K.

Experts at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco say the field has declined 10 percent in the last 150 years, and suggest a reversal could lead to problems in navigation and a jump in cancer rates with a diminished ozone layer.
There's that ozone layer thing again...what is it with these "the sky is falling" liberals...it's always the ozone layer...is this some obsession with words containing a "z"?

"Is a reversal coming? Yeah, it's coming for sure – sometime,'' said geologist Robert Coe of the University of California-Santa Cruz, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Oh God, not the dreaded 'reversal'?

Physicists say the average period between pole flips is about 200,000 years, and the last one is believed to have taken place 780,000 years ago, making the next swap long overdue.
now...just a minute...who was at the last pole flip...you know that one that took place 780,000 years ago...and did they use a Hewlett-Packard test unit then to figure this out? I think that was long before the compass was even invented. Did this article come out of "Science Fiction" comic books, or what?

According to Harvard University's Jeremy Bloxham, the field could disappear completely within the next 2,000 years if the rate of decline remains constant, but he's not certain if the poles will actually reverse.
Hey, I'll just hang out and wait for the next one...I got nothing to do for the next 2,000 years anyway.

"Chances are this is going to die out," he said, reports the San Mateo County Times. "Reversals are pretty rare."
Oh, I see...claim a spectacular headline, then end the story by saying it probably won't happen. I think the word "rare" is an understatement with a [arbitrary] occurance rate of 200,000 years.

If a flip did take place, it would be over the course of several thousand years, and scientists say it would likely reduce the protective ozone layer, cause glitches in satellites and electronic products, and create a flurry of navigational anomalies as compasses would "cease to be a simple means of navigation," according to Bloxham.
Same crap we heard about Y2K.

The consequences would be the same if a reversal takes place or the field continues to diminish, with one researcher estimating an additional 100,000 cancer cases annually as people would be subject to more of the sun's harmful rays.
Hey, life's a gamble...you pays yo' dime and you takes yo' chances. But, some liberal will figure out how to wrangle a few million out of Uncle Sam to "study" what can be done....follow the money.

People noted that while rocks on Earth were magnetized in a disordered way, the sea bottom was magnetized in long strips. Larry Morley (whose article was regarded so speculative that journals would not publish it) and then Matthews and Vine (who managed to publish) suggested that molten rock was spreading out like a conveyer belt from volcanic cracks in the middle of the ocean floor, e.g. the one in the middle of the Atlantic (Azores islands sit on it). Or rather like 2 belts, one moving towards Europe, one towards America, carrying on them the continental plates, so that Europe and America gradually drift apart. As each belt comes out of the crack, its lava solidifes to basalt, causing it to become magnetized, and when the field reverses, its magnetization reverses too. So the bottom of the ocean records the field like the tape of a tape recorder, containing perhaps 50 million years of record.

now...just a minute...who was at the last pole flip...you know that one that took place 780,000 years ago...and did they use a Hewlett-Packard test unit then to figure this out? I think that was long before the compass was even invented. Did this article come out of "Science Fiction" comic books, or what?

The strength and orientation of the earth's magnetic field is recorded cooling lava flows all over the earth. Here is a pretty good article explaining it.