Which is how I got to Chandler’s wobble in the first place.
I was googling on this and while the basic concept is almost predictable, a lot of the hits referenced some of the big name charlatans such as Edgar Cayce. So what’s the straight dope on that?
And while I’m at it, is it just my perception, or has there been more volcanic activity and earthquakes in the past couple of years?
To be more specific, I can tell that Chandler’s wobble is real, but is there any evidence that it is really related to mantle activity - and why do all the big “psychics” like it?
The Chandler wobble is interesting, because it was calculated around the time that it was discovered that it should stop within 68 years of starting, if no force was acting on the Earth to cause the wobble. No one knew what that force was, but there were a number of theories. Mantle activity was one theory of how it persisted. The current theory seems to be that it’s caused by fluctuating pressure on the bottom of the ocean.
For some reason, some of them like to predict some sort of polar shift in Earth’s future. The Chandler wobble produces (very small) pole shifts, and was caused by an unknown force, so who knew that it couldn’t cause a large, cataclysmic polar shift? There are some things in ancient myths that could be interpreted as referring to a large polar shift. It’s probably more fun and interesting to predict a terrible future cataclysm than to predict that life will pretty much go on as it has.
The master’s voice: How come the Chandler wobble hasn’t dampened out?