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Rapid shifts in the Earth’s north magnetic pole are forcing researchers to make an unprecedented early update to a model that helps navigation by ships, planes and submarines in the Arctic, scientists said.

The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move. On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones. The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 — but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly...

Earth’s Magnetic Field Decaying at an Alarming Rate December 11, 2018 | David F. Coppedge The biosphere depends on earth’s magnetic field, but it has been decaying rapidly for at least 1500 years. In Spacecraft Earth: A Guide for Passengers, Dr Henry Richter describes how the story of the decay of the earth’s magnetic field caught his attention. He had read the monograph by Dr Thomas Barnes in the 1970s, and realized the implications: if the decay is true, the earth could not be billions of years old. He considered the various proposals for maintaining the field, but none of...

Powerful Solar Storm Likely Detonated Sea Mines During Vietnam War By Brett Carter | November 9, 2018 3:46 pm Solar flares captured on sun. (Credit: NASA/SDO)On Aug. 4, 1972, the crew of a U.S. Task Force 77 aircraft flying near a naval minefield in the waters off Hon La observed 20 to 25 explosions over about 30 seconds. They also witnessed an additional 25 to 30 mud spots in the waters nearby.Destructor sea mines had been deployed here during Operation Pocket Money, a mining campaign launched in 1972 against principal North Vietnamese ports.There was no obvious reason why the mines...

A research team led by scientists in Taiwan and [Red] China announced on August 21, 2018, that Earth’s protective magnetic field has undergone relatively rapid shifts in the past, including one lasting just two centuries. That’s fast in contrast to the thousands of years thought to be needed for a magnetic pole reversal, an event whereby magnetic south becomes magnetic north and vice versa. Such an event might leave Earth with a substantially reduced magnetic field for some unknown period of time, exposing our world to dangerous effects from the sun. If it occurred in today’s world of ubiquitous electric...

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says. "What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen. The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said. The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth's solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the...

A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthermore, it generates spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights to shame. The new observations, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), not only are the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object beyond our solar system, but also mark the first time...

Blue Origin test flight, China's space-program, SLS, earth's magnetic field flipping?

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...

New research shows the most significant weakening is happening under Africa which has been dubbed the 'South Atlantic Anomaly' (SAA). As well as giving us our north and south poles, the magnetic field blankets the Earth, protecting it from solar winds and cosmic radiation. The forcefield has weakened significantly over the past 160 years and scientists now suggest it could be in the process of flipping. Such a change would be a switch in magnetic polarity and would see compasses point south rather than north. Scientists believe such an occurrence has actually happened several times in the history of our...

The Earth’s continuously changing magnetic field surrounds the planet like an invisible force field – deflecting highly charged solar particles. Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal, the Brunhes-Matuyama, that occurred around 780,000 years ago. A temporary reversal, the Laschamp event, occurred around 41,000 years ago, and lasted less than 1,000 years with the actual change of polarity lasting around 250 years. Our planet’s history...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The earth is on track for its hottest year on record and warming at a faster rate than expected, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday. Temperatures recorded mainly in the northern hemisphere in the first six months of the year, coupled with an early and fast Arctic sea ice melt and "new highs" in heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels, point to quickening climate change, it said. June marked the 14th straight month of record heat, the United Nations agency said. It called for speedy implementation of a global pact reached in Paris last December to limit...

There have been many estimates for when the earth's inner core was formed, but scientists from the University of Liverpool have used new data which indicates that the Earth's inner core was formed 1 -- 1.5 billion years ago as it "froze" from the surrounding molten iron outer core. . . . . In a new study published in Nature, researchers from the University's School of Environmental Sciences analysed magnetic records from ancient igneous rocks and found that there was a sharp increase in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field between 1 and 1.5 billion years ago. This increased...

“Is the number of volcanic eruptions worldwide increasing? “Yes,” answers Michael Snyder in this startling article.“ During the 20th century, there were a total of 3,542 volcanic eruptions globally. That works out to approximately 35 eruptions per year. That may sound like a lot, but according to Volcano Discovery there are 36 volcanoes erupting around the world right now. In other words, the number of volcanoes erupting as you read this article is greater than the 20th century’s yearly average.“ And all of this is part of a larger trend. In 2013, we witnessed the most volcanic eruptions worldwide that...

Before the spacecraft ended its mission, it captured almost 100,000 images of the planet mapping its gravitational field. As scientists study the data, they found that it ages about 4 billion years old. Furthermore, the spacecraft was able to collect sufficient information for scientists to conclude that Mercury’s crust is thicker in low latitudes and thinner at both poles. This kind of distribution highly suggests that the planet is made of liquid or molten outer core, which comprises 85% Mercury’s radius and bigger than Earth’s core. Also, the layer below the crust of the planet is made up of liquid...

Ice Age Magnetic Reversal Was Global Event And Linked With Super Volcano Eruption And Rapid Climate Variability, Says New Research October 17, 2012 in Geology & Climate During the last ice age, around 41,000 years ago, there was a very rapid and complete reversal of the Earth’s geomagnetic field, according to new research. There was already localized evidence of polarity reversals during this time, but with the new research, the theory that it was a global event is now strongly supported. And very interestingly, it is one that nearly coincided with the very fast, short-term climate variability of the last...

A magnetic field shift is old news. Around 800,000 years ago, magnetic north hovered over Antarctica and reindeer lived in magnetic south. The poles have flipped several times throughout Earth's history. Scientists have estimated that a flip cycle starts with the magnetic field weakening over the span of a few thousand years, then the poles flip and the field springs back up to full strength again. However, a new study shows that the last time the Earth's poles flipped, it only took 100 years for the reversal to happen. The Earth's magnetic field is in a weakening stage right now....

Searching for a pot of gold? Try the center of the Earth. More than 99 percent of Earth's gold is missing—it all sank to the center of the planet billions of years ago. In fact, says geologist Bernard Wood of Macquarie University in Australia, there's enough gold in Earth's core to coat its surface in 1.5 feet of the stuff. How did it get there? Earth formed from a series of smaller planetesimals that crashed together over the course of 30 million to 40 million years. Wood deduced how much gold ought to be present in Earth's crust by comparing...

Source:   University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date:   Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

Primordial NukesThe 2-billion-year-old tale of Earth's natural nuclear reactors Peter Weiss For more than a decade, Alexander P. Meshik has kept close tabs on a fleck of black rock no larger than an infant's fingernail. It's so unassuming that most people would sweep it into a dustpan without a second thought. Yet to Meshik, a nuclear physicist originally from Russia, this little scrap of mineral is a scientific gem. E. Roell The fleck, with its clues to believe-it-or-not geophysical events, emerged from the bowels of Earth decades ago. It was unearthed in the early 1970s at the Oklo uranium mine...