[mvonfr]

Someone was telling me about this a couple of weeks ago - there is a goofy theory about something called "Planet X" that is supposedly going to pass close to Earth and invert the poles.

There are many variations of the theory, some goofy and some not. Connection to Planet X is minimal.

The pole switching and (related) rapid continental changes theory was developed by Hapgood and was endorsed by Einstein.

[sadimgnik]

The pole switching and (related) rapid continental changes theory was developed by Hapgood and was endorsed by Einstein

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... and made famous by Herbert Allan Boardman, when he staged a mock 'assasination attempt' on the President of the United States with a wax bullet.

Oh, hang on, that was "the HAB theory", wasn't it?

:-)

(http://www.habtheory.com for those who've never read the novel.)

[Swordmaker]

The Hapgood theory was not originally related to the magnetic pole reversal... the magnetic reversal has happened thousands of times in the Earth's past according to the geo-magnetic record in the rocks.

Hapgood's theory is that the earth itself will apparently "flip" by about 40 -60 degrees... with the polar regions moving extremely rapidly (say in about 4-8 hours) toward the equator. The air and water would tend to stay in place as the Earth moves under them... resulting in major tsunamis (1000s of feet high), winds of several thousand miles per hour, and the end of civilization for the umpteenth time.

There is actually a lot of evidence in the geology and paleontology to support this theory.

The only relation that magnetic poles MAY have is the further developed theory that the actual planetary shift may occur only in the mantle... which become seperated from the core when the Earth's magnetic field collapses during a reversal and the magneto-hydrodynamic coupling of the crust to the core is negated allowing the crust to move catastrphically.

[plusone]

Not exactly, if I read your post correctly. Hapgood talked about the physical movement of the earth's axis. The north and south axis of the earth actually moved several thousand miles as the earth did a partial 'flip over'. His theory was that this movement was the cause of the ice ages, since the new regions that slid up above the artic circle then became fridgid. He didn't know the cause of this, never came up with a mechanism to explain it, though other researchers have tried to find a cause. The article talks about the last pole reversal of 750,000 years ago. This is in referrence to the magnetic poles far beneath our feet, not the physical axis about which the earth rotates. Interestingly, another researcher, Velikovsky, demonstrated in one of his books (Earth in Upheavel, IIRC) that there was a magnetic pole shift around 3000 BC (or something like that, I don't recall exactly). Pottery that had been fired in a kiln from ancient Greece showed a north-south orientation opposite of pottery fired today. (The pottery when it is cooked in a kiln to harden it captures the magnetic alignment of the earth during the process). Velikovsky and Hapgood, interestingly enough, were contemporaries, writting their books about the same time. And both were ignored, or worse, pillared by the mainstream scientific establishment.