Is it true that the Earth has shifted it’s magnetic poles several times in its past and that it will happen again sometime in the future? What would this mean for the Earth and its inhabitants? Would there be a safe place to be when this happens? Or is this stuff just what UFO and conspiracy buffs get into?
Since it seems no one else is gonna do it:
That article talks about the geometric pole (or axis of rotation) not the same as magnetic poles.
Magnetic poles have flopped before, it is clearly indicated in the magnetic orientations of sediment beds laid down over different periods.
Will it happen again? Probably.
What does it mean? We don’t really know, but there are no large die off’s associated with past magnetic flips, so there isn’t a big reason to be super alarmed. Nothing we could do to stop or slow it down anyway.
About the best we can do and wait and see. If it happens I am sure we will monitor for increased numbers of solar particles making it to the ground. In that event, I am sure we would do as best we could to minimize the problems associated with that.
I thought that they were in constant movement. I know that some aircraft navaids have to be periodically realigned because of the changes between true north and magnetic.
I have also seen an airport that had to have its runway renumbered because mag north had drifted just out of tolerance for the old runway numbers.
Or did you just mean that they may flip north-south altogether?
They do drift around around a bit all the time. But we are talking about a total swap of the north and south poles.