Shifting Poles

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/13/science/.../13magn.html?th

here is a very interesting article in the New York Times about the Earth's magnetic field heading towards a polarity change where the North Pole will have a negative polarity. this has apparently happened several times in the past.

some of the consequences of such an event sound rather dire. the flipping process is expected to take up to 5-7000 years to complete. unfortunately, for the phenomena to happen the existing magnetic field must slowly deteriorate to neutral in order for the switch to take place.

the magnetic field of the Earth protects us from cosmic harm. meteors, solar radiation and other hazards that are deflected out of the Earth's path using the same principle of attraction-repellation inherent to all magnetic devices.

without the protective field, solar storms would destroy the ozone layer killing some species off and dramatically increasing the threat of cancer in humans. although occasionally, severe solar storms destroy the ozone layer now, the Earth can restore the damage in as little as 3 years. but with no magnetic field, the ozone layer would basically be the proverbial sitting duck during this recovery time.

dspite all the bad news, scientists have taken a position that things wouldnt be all that bad. although there is unrefrutable evidence of tiny sea creatures becoming extinct from a previous shift, there has been no evidence that man or other larger mammals were affected.

i kinda question this casual attitude, especially considering the last shift happened 980,000 years ago. as we all know, data acquisition frequently becomes sporadic when so much time has marched by. no one really knows how the dinosaurs were wiped out.

some theories involving a giant meteor hitting the Earth and creating a dust cloud that blacked out the sun causing climatic shifts that the cold-blooded reptiles couldnt stomach tells me that maybe we were in the ebbside of a shift.

well, no matter what the ultimate outcome, satellites have already begun to suffer the effects of the weakening magnetic field and the field is showing signs of rapid deterioration. now realize, when talking about something that has been around for 4 billion years, what is rapid in the geophysical world maybe several generations for us.

now i cant say that this post belongs in the environmental forum. but i cant help but wonder if our draining the world of oil has anything to do with the changing of the field... there, now its environmental.

 

hundreds of times??

we only have evidence of less than a dozen times in the past 10 million years. each time the shift occurred the event was recorded in date-able stone.

i take it you didnt read the article?

 

i think you will find that in space, only a small deflecting force is necessary to keep the Earth from being hit.

also, another thing to consider is how the Earth is hit. most meteors that become meteorites are deflected but not enough to miss the Earth. but what does happen is that by being deflected and hitting the atmosphere at an angle, the meteorite burns up to 99% more of its mass before striking the Earth than they would have if they had struck the Earth at an angle approaching 90º because of the additional volume of air that it must pass through.

i once read that this phenomena helps the Earth avoid up to 100 potentially cataclysmic collisions each year.