‘Nova’ last night was about the reduction in the Earth’s magnetic field. They spent quite a long time describing how Mars had water and atmosphere until it lost its magnetic field a couple billion years ago, then the solar wind stripped off anything that could evaporate. Now our field is dropping at an alarming rate and will be gone by the turn of the next millenium and when it’s gone Earth will go the way of Mars and we’re all going to die.
Well, as any idiot yelling at his TV at about 8:10PM Central Time could tell you (and as the geologists in the final third of the show, to the idiot’s surprise, agreed), as long as we have a trillion tons of molten iron sloshing around the core at one revolution per day our field ain’t going FAR and is probably just in the process of switching poles. Which it does fairly often. Yeah, it’ll obsolete our compasses. Yeah, during the process some atmosphere will be stripped. Yeah, some extra cosmic rays will get through and cause some more cancers before the field stabilizes. But we (as earthlings, not as a species) have been through this before. It’s not the end of the world. (Those geologists figure that by the time it gets to its worst we’ll be able to handle the cancer and they were all disappointed they won’t live long enough to see the aurorae when we have several weak poles that travel around the planet. My kind of people!)
But come on! Don’t we have enough alarmist news reports during Sweeps? Does ‘Nova’ have to get on the "ALL OF YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE! bandwagon?
They have to compete with TLC and the Discovery Channel. Sober, responsible documentaries just aren’t gonna cut it with the critical 18-34 demographic. Look for Nova episodes about Atlantis and the face on Mars in the near future.
I was watching this last night, too. I was about to pit them as well with the title:
“We’re all gonna die of cancer, but at least the sky will be pretty!”
Cause you see, if the magnetic field continutes to destabilize, we will have several magnetic poles all over the world. Which means a lot of people will get cancer from all the cosmic radiation, but we will have lots of Aurora Borealis. Good thing, too. They wouldn’t want this to be entirely bad. They have to end on a good note.
Feh! To quote the geologists’ numbers it’ll be a piddling hundred thousand extra cases a year. Barely noticable. Nothing at all like THE END OF ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET! as they were screaming about through most of the show.
The show was the first I had heard about a lot of this, though, like the study of old Royal Navy records to map changes in the field. And the simulations were cool.
Can’t we build some sort of ship that will tunnel to the earth’s core and then set off some nukes to restart the core?
(that would make a great movie!)
Two redeeming points made in the show (don’t make me look for a third): That we can track the strength of magnetism over the last several thousand years via the magnetite in clay-fired pots and that the particular orogeny mentioned captured the last swing to the tune of six degrees a day.
I’m fairly certain it would make a terrible movie… a movie so laughable that the trailer would send me into hysterics and I would never see it… but maybe it would make a great movie with a terrible trailer
One other thing I noticed was that, when they briefly showed a graph of the strength of the magnetic field (I don’t remember exactly what period it covered, alas), it showed clearly that, while we’re in a period in which it’s weakening rapidly, that was preceded by a period in which it increased substantially, and just as quickly. So, we’re just getting back to where we were.
It’s a bit like saying, “Oh my god, the temperatures are dropping like a stone, and when it hits absolute zero, we’ll all be dead!!!” Well, no, it’s just that it’s November, and winter is coming.
I thought it was crazy that they made it seem like impending doom in the first half or so. My buddy and I were watching and during the 1st half we kept saying, “But what about the pole switching thing?” Then they got to Hawaii.
I thought that this show was much less enjoyable and informative than The Elegant Universe, which is the only other Nova I’ve ever seen and is the reason I watched the one last night.
Can regular Nova watchers say if Nova is usually more like last night or The Elegant Universe, or perhaps a happy little place in the middle.
Ha. You only THINK that Nova was exaggerating the danger. As those of us who have read the greatest prophetic volume of scripture ever[sup]1[/sup] know, the collapse of Earth’s magnetic field will extinguish the consciousness of every living human being, or, at the very least, will cause wild religious hallucinations.
You know, I lose sight of the fact that every broadcast of any program has some first-time viewer. Especially since I’ve seen just about every episode of Nova over the past thirty years. (choking back a tear as I realize there is a new convert in our midst)
IF (big if) you ignore the alarming nature of parts of last night’s show and concentrate on the science (which was interesting) that is pretty typical, though they sometimes knock one out of the park, like with The Elegant Universe.
While I love NOVA, and most shows like it, I think I’m going to lose it if I hear one more scientist say, “It’s not a question of if it’s going to happen, but a question of when.”
Whether it’s the magnetic poles reversing, or a massive earthquake devastating a major urban area, or an asteroid or comet clobbering the earth, or a giant tsunami sweeping across the ocean and inundating a few hundred miles of coastline, it’s always the same line. It may be a true statement, but I’m sick of hearing it!
Hm. This is interesting to me, and I thought of something last night when I was watching it. Could something like this have precipitated the Cambrian Explosion, when a host of new species evolved and left some really neat fossils?
Think about it: Evolution is mutation filtered by environment. If the mutation rate goes up, you’ll get more species due to the greater amount of all mutations (good, bad, indifferent). It’s like going from one lottery a month to one lottery a day: More losers, but also more winners. What’s a cheap way to get more mutations? Pump in some radiation and let those long DNA strands get broken up a bit. And what keeps the solar radiation in check? Our magnetic field. If our magnetic field was significantly weakened in prior times, that could explain for the Cambrian Explosion.
Is this plausible? Is there a good way to test it? (Sadly, nobody was making pottery then.)
I also watched this, my third Nova ever. The first two were unbelievably good…the new fighter aircraft competition between Boeing and the Skunk Works. AWESOME. The Elegant Universe. Great. And this last one, which I (apparently thankfully) only caught the last half of.
Nova seems pretty good. I might give it another try.
Even the The Elegant Universe has alarmist qualities. When those science dudes were talking about the possibility that our universe might collide with another universe, I peed on myself. Practically.
I prefer this kind of fear than the one that Dateline regularly dishes out. I swear the producers of that show are all paranoid schizophrenics.
“Dad says the sun isnt going out. He says its colder because the earth’s orbit is taking us farther from the sun. He says winter will be here soon. . . Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?”
hundred thousand extra cases a year. Barely noticable. Nothing at all like THE END OF ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET! as they were screaming about through most of the show.