That magnetic pole reversal: what’s the cause?
A great many people know that earth has a North and South pole, and that the poles are not just geographic but magnetic as well. Fewer (but probably still a great many) are aware that the geographic and magnetic poles for each hemisphere, although close to each other, are not in the same identical spot.
Fewer still are aware that the magnetic poles wander. For example:
The North Magnetic Pole moves over time due to magnetic changes in the Earth’s core. In 2001, it was determined by the Geological Survey of Canada to lie west of Ellesmere Island in northern Canada at 81.3°N 110.8°W. It was situated at 83.1°N 117.8°W in 2005. In 2009, while still situated within the Canadian Arctic territorial claim at 84.9°N 131.0°W, it was moving toward Russia at between 55 and 60 kilometres (34 and 37 mi) per year….
And then there’s the startling reality that poles sometimes reverse entirely:
Based on the magnetic fingerprints locked into ancient rocks, we know that over the last 20 million years, magnetic north and south have flipped roughly every 200,000 to 300,000 years (this rate has not been constant over the planet’s lifetime, though). The last of these major reversals occurred about 780,000 years ago, although the Poles do wander around in between these larger flips.
These changes have to do with variations in the earth’s core, and are poorly understood. But we have known for quite some time that in terms of averages we seem overdue for another flip. Recently it was predicted that such a change might be imminent, which caused a flurry of commentary online, with some articles such as this one being particularly alarmist about it, and others attempting to soothe.
We all know that predictions don’t always come true. But this one did. It seems that last night, shortly after midnight, the predicted magnetic pole reversal occurred.
And yet here we are, still around, with hardly any noticeable difference. That’s a relief, or course.
But the blame game goes on nonetheless. And who is getting the majority of the blame? Why, Donald Trump, that’s who, at least from the left. After all, isn’t he responsible for the ever-increasing polarization of politics and of American life in general? According to some people (although I think it’s a rather preposterous and downright foolish accusation), that political and social polarization has somehow affected the core of the earth and caused this magnetic flip.
I say it’s just a coincidence. But hey, the left blames everything on Trump, so why not this?
Trump himself has decided to react with humor. He’s tweeted, “I’m powerful, it’s true. But I’m not all-powerful. Lighten up, folks.”
And DC Council member Trayon White Sr., who recently attributed snowstorms in that city on climate manipulation by “the Rothschilds…to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities,” has not been heard from yet on the subject of the magnetic pole reversal. But stay tuned.
April fools?
This is April after all.
But btw, how does a liquid metal mantle create a magnetic field?
And if you drill no more than 10 some miles into the crust, how do we know that the “core” itself is solid?
Neo: One of your better April Fools.
One word. Geophysics
Oh, so That’s what it was . ..
This topic was is and remains a mystery to me, one I’ll never understand. Semi-interesting though, if essentially occult.
It is not true that no one noticed the flipping. My coffee this morning suddenly lurched away from me (onto the keyboard) and then onto me (hitting Kitty, who was in my lap helping me to Internet, and who disapproved).
This was clearly caused either by polar flipping or polar-geists. (Probably not by Polar Bears, because their sudden removal from the former North to the former South Pole appears to have resulted in a doubling of their population, to ~ 54,000. They are now engaged in a turf war with the penguins. All this clearly being an effect, not a cause, of the flip.)
ADDENDUM. One hardly need point out, of course, that the flipping was manmade, a result of his insupportable use of planetary resources to continue his existence. This results in the indisputable phenomenon of CAGW, which was the proximate cause of the Flippin’ Phooey.
I think this page has lost its sense of direction.
vanderleun:
But not its magnetism.
Julie near Chicago:
I thought maybe the water would start swirling in the opposite direction as it goes down the drains, but apparently that effect is because of the rotation of the earth, which hasn’t changed.
Must you needle us with this type of flippant polarizing commentary?
“it was moving toward Russia”
So now even Mother Gaia is colluding. Another effect of the unspeakable evil of Trump.
I got so used to saying “I blame Bush”…
I know / knew that except in unusual circumstances, neo treats herself to a day off every Sunday. As I entered my browser, I knew also that neo likes to fool us on April 1st. I wondered how she would manage it this year, since I was already on high alert for any post dated today, Sunday April 1st.
I was not disappointed — and *this* time I was alert and not fooled! (But . . . but . . . errmm . . . the magnetic poles *are* due for a flip, aren’t they?)
Ha Ha! This post is most definitely one of your all time great April Fools!
Thanks for the laugh!
(of course, I won’t be laughing if/when it does happen and it really does matter!)
Yes they will flip, but when ever it happens it will still be Trump’s and the NRA, and the patriarchy’s ….. fault.
Easter, … anything can happen, guys rise from the dead, you name it.
😉
Good one.
“om Says:
April 1st, 2018 at 8:51 pm
Yes they will flip, but when ever it happens it will still be Trump’s and the NRA, and the patriarchy’s ….. fault.”
There ain’t NUTHIN white cis-gender men cain’t DO.
P’tickly if’n it upsets them Liberals.
Well done!! Sophisticated! Funny!
(And far, far better than Elon Musk’s absolutely pathetic “gag”….)
Don’t forget white people. You cannot underestimate the culpability for all things that can be lain at the feet of white people collectively. Libtards don’t get a pass just because they’re trying to “make up” for all that eeeeevil brought into the world…
Geophysics: failure.
“Fewer still are aware that the magnetic poles wander.”
Fewer still are aware that the Earth’s magnetic field is decaying with a “half-life” of about 1400 years. That is, if the measured rate of decay remains consistent, in @1400 years, the magnetic field will be half as strong as it is today.
But yes, this was a good April Fool joke.
This is good, but Trump/Kardashian ticket was still the best.
I blame the Rothschild family. If they can control the weather then they obviously can control the Earth’s magnetic field.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-lawmaker-says-recent-snowfall-caused-byrothschilds-controlling-the-climate/2018/03/18/daeb0eae-2ae0-11e8-911f-ca7f68bff0fc_story.html?utm_term=.2d92264d0ca2
I had to read the gag line a few times (hours after Neo posted) before I got it.
The earth’s core contains iron and nickel which are ferromagnetic elements, and also uranium. 4.5 billion years since the earth’s formation, it is the radioactivity of the uranium that keeps the interior molten and maintains the magnetic field.
If the interior were cooler and solid, like Mars, then the magnetic field goes away, there are no van Allen belts and the solar wind essentially blows the atmosphere away. Then the UV and cosmic rays sterilize the surface.
So many things had to go right to allow 3 or 4 billions years of evolution, and the magnetic field is a big one.
y81:
Thanks, but I think this post from 2010 was my finest April Fools hour.
We know the Earth’s core is solid because its mass, and therefore the density of the core due to pressure, is too great for a liquid state.
If the magnetic pole switch does start occurring, it will take thousands of years to happen, so I don’t expect anything bad to happen in our lifetimes.
@Ymar Sakar:But btw, how does a liquid metal mantle create a magnetic field?
Assuming you want to know, and not playing April fool:
The mantle is not liquid metal. It doesn’t produce the magnetic field. It’s more like glass; it flows in geological time scales but can pinch-hit for solid.
And if you drill no more than 10 some miles into the crust, how do we know that the “core” itself is solid?
Because of how earthquake waves propagate. The kind of waves that can’t exist in liquids, get blocked by or bounce off the core. The kinds of waves that can exist in liquids get refracted at the interface, and from that refraction you can get that a) it’s a liquid and b) how dense it is.
Wave physics is well-understood and can be used to study lots of things, not just the Earth’s structure.
Anyway, inner core would be solid because of the temperature and pressure it would have to be at. Outer cores is liquid, known through wave propagation.
Fredrick:
Good summary of the salient points regarding the geophysics of the Earth’s magnetic field and the Earth’s deep structure, for anyone who wants to learn something “new.”
Sigh.
Got me.
(In my defence: busy yesterday – building a new fence – and it’s 2 April in the early afternoon as I read this.)
I swear I spent 5 minutes googling “magnetic poles shift” before I went “what the hell” and returned to the blog for clarification. (It mattered: I’m a geology buff lol.)
…which is another lesson in “always read the comments” before searching.
Especially in April.
“…which is another lesson in “always read the comments” before searching.
Especially in April.”
I was going to chastise Neo for omitting the relevant link to the magnetic flip last night .. until I read the comments.
BTW, does anyone really doubt the Left would blame Trump if it does happen on his watch?
I enjoyed the National Geographic article anyway.
“That being said, one total bonus of having a weaker magnetic field is that auroras will be visible from much lower latitudes, so the nighttime skies will be even more epic.”
A friend of mine has speculated that the Bethlehem Star was more likely a low-latitude aurora, as the stars don’t stay stationary enough to pick out a single house, or city, or even country, but an aurora might stay locked in place for long enough to guide the astronomic observers aka Wise Men from the East. Note that they would most likely be expat Israelites, as no one else would care about the birth of the King of the Jews.
I will suggest he research magnetic strengths of the relevant era.
Ok – I was fooled.
I invested myself in celebration of the Resurrection, not eggs, bunnies or April Fool’s.
Don’t think I missed anything, either!
Frederick Says:
April 2nd, 2018 at 1:43 pm
Anyway, inner core would be solid because of the temperature and pressure it would have to be at. Outer cores is liquid, known through wave propagation.
Does not solve the magnetic field issue.
Are you in possession of a liquid electro magnetic device that creates a magnetic field using a liquid metal inside wrapped wires?
When there are no engineering valid models, then your thesis claim does not work.
Engineering projects often create scaled down models of things like bridges, because the same principle that works up scale should work when down scaled. Same for boats and planes. A plane the length of my arm works on the same principles as that of something 100 or 1000x larger. The materials may need to be modified due to additional stresses, but beyond that, miniature models mimic exactly the performance of larger models.
The temperature and pressure on the core is not measured directly. It is only through a computer model of the earth, same as Global Warming and climate technology. In some ways, Gaia cult has more data on weather patterns and temperatures than people have on the Earth’s core. How do you get temperature and pressure readings when you have no way to get past even the crust?
The model says there are ways, like using waves. That’s like thinking if we measure the temperature of the earth using radio, our weather predictions for global warming/cooling will be accurate. People’s computer model predictions aren’t even accurate when we directly measure the temperature of the Earth, because we can access it, let alone for things we cannot access.
So no, there is no such thing as “the core is solid because it must be”. Nobody knows any such thing especially given the absence of data. Models are merely models, they are not data.
It’s more like glass; it flows in geological time scales but can pinch-hit for solid.
When was the last time people obtained a sample from the mantle? As for volcanoes, well if people are making assumptions on whether the mantle is solid or x based upon solidified magma, maybe they should not do that.
The earth’s core contains iron and nickel which are ferromagnetic elements, and also uranium. 4.5 billion years since the earth’s formation, it is the radioactivity of the uranium that keeps the interior molten and maintains the magnetic field.
That’s like me saying I know what is going on inside Tom’s computer and room and house/apartment, by using a predictive model from this side of the computer screen.
Until I enter your room and open up your computer, kind of hard to make those claims or verify the truth. Your claims are on the same level of accuracy and data.
There has not been and never has been, a direct data analysis of the Earth’s mantle, let alone the core. People talk about it as if they know it is true, but as I detailed, there’s a problem with their epistemology. Just because somebody wrote it in a book does not mean it now becomes scripture and our religion: although humans seem to act like that all the time.
People will “know” there is uranium in the mantle and what or where the core is, when they drill down there and get a direct sample. More data is better than no data.
Because of how earthquake waves propagate.
I’ve heard that line before but it doesn’t work. Again, that would be like global warming cultists saying they know the future because they indirectly measured temperature with radio waves or light frequencies. Well, that is data I suppose, but that is not an exclusive conclusion.
The data on earthquakes do not exclusively point to the conclusion of a solid core. There are many things that could be causing or explaining the data. Putting up a false dichotomy and multiple choice, and restricting every other option in existence, and saying “X data shows that Y is true” is not valid evidence for a hypothesis. Especially when Y is not verified to be true.
This isn’t even the classic problem of observing the color of birds. 99 birds of one type can be black, but it does not mean all birds of that type are black. Humanity hasn’t even accessed or obtained data on the Earth’s core. They have only obtained data on earthquakes, which is crustal movement of plates and other things according to the orthodox interpretation. It would be equivalent to me tapping on my computer screen and concluding that I now know what size and composition your chair leg is made out of. The guess might be correct but it is just a guess based upon the feedback of the data.
The kind of waves that can’t exist in liquids, get blocked by or bounce off the core. The kinds of waves that can exist in liquids get refracted at the interface, and from that refraction you can get that a) it’s a liquid and b) how dense it is.
Except the current orthodox standard model has liquid magma and a molten mantle plus other things, between your waves on the crust and the target core. So how do you know the refraction interference waves you are getting is indicative of the core vs the mantle, the mantle vs the crust, and the molten metal vs the liquid metal?
Brain the size of a planet but doesn’t know squat about geophysics.
https://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_distance_to_the_earth%27s_core
For people that don’t have the background for this topic.
How thick is the earth’s core?
1. Inner Core – A mass of iron with a temperature of about 7000 degrees F. Although such temperatures would normally melt iron, immense pressure on it keeps it in a solid form. The inner core is approximately 1,500 miles in diameter. 2. Outer Core – A mass of molten iron about 1,425 miles deep that surrounds the solid inner core. Electrical currents generated from this area produce the earth’s magnetic field.
The orthodox model claims as a hypothesis that a liquid core generates electrical currents to produce a magnetic field. In order to test that hypothesis, an experiment is needed. Since people cannot drill past the crust, not even close, as they still have 3900 + x miles to go to the core, the normal solution is to build a simulated model and put the hypothesis to the test on the model.
https://physics.aps.org/story/v5/st20
There is a tentative way to duplicate the mechanism of the theory. I suppose people didn’t mention it because they aren’t used to the rigor of scientific testing of hypothesis and theories.
Molten iron and nickel oozing within the Earth are thought to generate the magnetic field that points compass needles northward. But despite an elaborate theoretical explanation for the field generation process, researchers have been unable to create a so-called fluid dynamo of their own. Now, after 25 years of work, a Latvian-German collaboration reports in the 8 May PRL that they have finally created a magnetic field the same way the Earth does, providing clear confirmation of the theory.
Many of us have built electromagnets by wrapping wire around an iron bar and attaching a battery. Such a “technical dynamo” is quite different from a fluid dynamo, explains Gunter Gerbeth of the Rossendorf Research Center in Dresden, Germany. “A fluid dynamo has no external source of electrical current,” he says, because it’s a closed system. But under the right conditions, an isolated fluid—when stirred properly—can maintain electric currents and magnetic fields, although the system needs a small “seed” field to get started. The Earth’s magnetic field, for example, is continuously regenerated by electric currents in the swirling molten metal of the outer core, which is trapped between the mantle and the solid inner core.
Those with electrical engineering backgrounds would have understood why I was asking about liquid metal vis a vis an EM field.
The current geophysics theory was made without any model backing it. And the current advancements are no enough to confirm the theory either, unless people believe liquid sodium is what makes up the mantle and core…
Even after the liquid dynamo is constructed, tests must still be carried out to measure if the model creates the same scaled EM field strength as the earth. Even if the mechanism is plausible, it does not mean the model is correct.
After all, Global Warming or Cooling is feasible or plausible, but it does not mean humans caused it. The hypothesis is precisely correct or incorrect based on the details and the test results.
When science becomes a religion, people adopt hypothesis and theories as Holy Scripture that cannot be questioned.
om Says:
April 3rd, 2018 at 12:12 am
You should read up on this subject, check out the link above, if you want to engage in a scientific discussion of these topics.
People like you need to put in some work to pay attention and do your homework, otherwise you won’t be able to perform well on various topics.
Also, the size of one’s brain does not determine one’s intelligence. The orthodox evolutionary theories posit that brains increased in size along with intelligence, thus they are connected.
The reality is that birds like parrots and crows are smarter than their bigger brained apes and monkeys.
Even if their intelligence was about on par or equal to each other, it would not support the hypothesis that brain size is linked to intelligence.
This is merely the result of people not doing their homework.
I found it on the interwebs it must be true.
https://www.livescience.com/6959-hole-drilled-bottom-earth-crust-breakthrough-mantle-looms.html
I’m not a big fan of popular science, but at least the Japanese or Easterners are at least attempting to do the data gathering required to create an accurate model of the Earth’s internals.
When people in the West tell me “we know this is true because scientists created a computer model of it based upon assumptions and untested hypothesis”, a lot of people will buy that, I know. Not everyone.
Racist much?
Do your homework. http://www.iodp.org/ International Ocean Discovery Project.
Successors to the Deep Sea Drilling Poject.
Geologists, wait for it, Geophysicists, Paleontologists (diatoms, radiolaria, etc. for dating sediments) Paleoclimatologists. You think those geophysicists might know something about the Earth’s magnetic field? Since it provides some of the essential knowledge about plate tectonics and dating of sea floor spreading?
Look at the faces and names involved; more than just “Japanese and Easterners.” Big expensive science with a very large ship.
Homework indeed. Brain the size of a planet.
Everything I know about the earth’s core I learned from Edgar Rice Burroughs.
😉