Does anybody know much about this? e.g. what effect it might have on humans(skin cancer etc.) or animals(migration etc.)? I hear the aurora will be pretty cool!
This page offers a summary of the science. {url=“http://www.magneticpole.com/info/mpr/”]And this page has a short list of relevant websites. (Found by Googling for magnetic pole reversal. There have also been a number of interesting TV documentaries made on the topic.)
Since reversals happen every hundred thousand years or so (estimates vary), it won’t be truly calamitous for life on this planet, despite talk about nightmare scenarios like the solar wind stripping the earth of its atmosphere (this is very unlikely). But I would stock up on the sunblock, as it’s not exactly going to be pleasant either. Navigation may prove a problem, as not only will compasses stop working, but GPS satellites will get a battering. Assuming we’re not all living on Venus and communicating via 10 mile long arm semaphores by then.
Navigation won’t be affected. Firstly, real navigation of big important things have used gyros for years. Secondly, GPS won’t be affected at all. Those things are way up there. Poorer Boy Scouts will have a problem, not much otherwise.
The Earth will still have a magnetic field, it just won’t be so heavily dipole. Not such a big disaster.
Auroras only occur near the poles since that is where the biggest magnetic flux is near the Earth. Without that concentration, the auroras could occur just about anywhere, but would be far, far fainter.
Practically everything known about animal migration is still under debate. I doubt that most species use it.
There are magnetic sensing bacteria that use the Earth’s field to orient themselves. But they can adapt faster than the field can change. And since it won’t go away entirely, they could handle it all.
refusal’s cite is suspect. I think that much of the content is, to say the least, controversial. For starters I would point to this paragraph right at the start:
“In my opinion - the Earth will loose its magnetics - the grids that form the consciousness of our reality will collapse - as we shift into the next level of consciousness. Reality as we know it ceases to exist - a newer reality occuring for all souls. This will come swiftly and will not be measured in linear time.”
Could have been written by lekatt.
And under the title VARIOUS THEORIES ON POLES SHIFTS there is this by Drunvalo Melchizedek:
“Prior to the poles of the Earth moving to new locations, which is when the human consciousness usually moves into the Fourth Dimension, there would be a period of time where there may be worldwide chaos. It is a period where most people go insane, all social systems, financial systems, political systems etc., collapse and the planet is plunged into total chaos. This time period traditionally, throughout the universe, has been about three months to two years directly prior to the actual poles of the planet shifting.”
I doubt that any confirmation of the above scenario will be found in the scientific literature.
As to the magnetic field reversals, as ftg wrote, the total field shouldn’t change much. The magnetic field is theorized to be a result of the circulation of conductive fluids in the interior of the earth. This circulation apparently undergoes periodic instability which reduces the dipole magnetic field, increases the magnetic fields having more poles and eventually reestablishes stability with the dipole field reversed. The circulation of the earth interior doesn’t go away, and the energy input stays the same so it could be expected that the total magnetic energy could very well be pretty constant.
Here is what Dr. Stephen G. Brush (University of Maryland) has to say about magnetic field reversals in Scientists Confront Creationism, Laurie R. Godfrey, editor, W. W. Norton Co., New York. (McDonald and Gunst are US Geological Survey scientists who intensively studied the weakening of dipole field.)
“To begin with, McDonald and Gunst state explicitly that “the magnetic dipole field is being driven destructively to smaller values by fluid motions which transform its magnetic energy into that of the near neighboring modes rather than expend it more directly as Joule heat” (1968, p. 2057). In other words, the energy is being transferred from the dipole field to the quadrupole field and to higher moments rather than being dissipated as heat. This implies that the value of the dipole field could not have been much greater in the past, since it is limited by the total magnetic energy, which does not change very rapidly.”
And finally, the magnetic field doesn’t protect us from the radiation in space. That is what the atmosphere does. The magnetic field steers charged particles toward the north and south magnetic poles causing the auroras, and during solar storms, some disruption of radio communication and navigation.