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Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?
- mrspeaker 8y ago"While any magnetic-field flip would still be thousands of years away...". Sneaky sentence right at the end. Sure the last one happened 700,000 years ago, so it is "soon", the but article made it sound like it was happening tomorrow!
- AznHisoka 8y agoIt's like those articles that hedge their outrageous predictions. "Facebook is probably going to be supplanted in 5 years, but then again they own Instagram and WhatsApp, so they might be fine". What is it going to be, Nostradamus?!
- virgilp 8y agoIt's either going to be supplanted, or it won't be. There is no third option. You're welcome.
- elbrian 8y agoYou seem confused. No one implied that there was a third option.
- stcredzero 8y agoFalse. Facebook could retain all the Boomers, but coexist for awhile with other social media dominating the millennial market.
- Izkata 8y agoI wonder why this is downvoted... MySpace and Facebook coexisted in a very similar dynamic for several years before Facebook opened to everyone.
- lb1lf 8y agoDiscussing an unstable mountainous area with a geologist once, he made it sound like collapse was imminent, so I asked him when to expect it. "Oh, any day, now - definitely in the next 50,000 years or so..."
- cowboybeboop 8y agoAnd you are just telling me now?
- magduf 8y agoThat's the problem with geology like that: the collapse really could happen next week, or not for another 10,000 years.
- justinator 8y agoOn the flip side: "Geologic Time includes Now"
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoSoon in space-time does mean hundreds of thousands of years. The masses do not appreciate this, respectfully.
- balabaster 8y agoNot even in space time. If you consider the age of this planet, hundreds of thousands of years is still a tiny slice of time - especially given that even if you accommodate the possibility that humans have been around possibly only for a few hundred thousand years, in the grand scheme of the 4.53 billion years of existence of earth if reports are considered accurate, it's a blip on the radar, we barely even existed.
- starlig-ht 8y agoAnd we have only gained the knowledge of this as a species within the last hundred years.
- dugluak 8y agoThey don't understand the implications. There are many people who take this seriously and dig holes underground, spend thousands of dollars to prepare themselves for the D day ....
- darkpuma 8y agoI'm stockpiling orgonite right now to protect my family. When the magnetic poles flip that stuff is going to be worth it's weight in gold!
- iamthepieman 8y agoThat was a rabbit hole i did not need to spend the last 30 minutes on. For those who don't have the time like I didn't Organite is a substance made of resin metals and quartz that balances and harmonizes Bio-energy (known as orgone). Orgone is analogous to chi or prana and is a type of bio-energy that reverses the effect of entropy[0] It seems to be a mix of crystal healing and EMF grounding (also known as earthing) It can: - Neutralizes emf radiation. - Clears negative energy. - Aids in meditation. - Supports restful sleep. - Enhances lucid dreaming. - Relieves stress. - Purifies the living area. - Can detoxify water. It is, of course, completely bogus. [0]If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation. - Arthur Eddington
- legohead 8y agoBetteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." If we were pretty certain this was going to actually happen, the article would be: The Pole is flipping soon! Here's what you need to know. etc
- luma 8y agoWhen dealing with geologists and cosmologists, 1000 years is the textbook definition of "soon".
- throwawaymath 8y agoQuite right. In fact on geological and cosmological timescales, "in 1000 years" essentially means, "momentarily." The modern measurements which underpin this observation have interesting parallels to the Vedic timekeeping of the Upanishads. Barely a (Brahma) day has passed since the beginning of the universe, and orders of magnitude more time must pass before Vishnu will blink for the first time :)
- ChuckMcM 8y agoThere are a couple of issues here and it is important to be careful about not conflating them. One, is the question of "how long" does a flip take? There is some evidence that it can take as few as 100 years[1], the previous consensus estimate (2004) was about 7000 years[2]. That is important because the faster it happens the more havoc it is likely to cause. If it happens over thousands of years then humans will adapt to a 'non constant' compass direction and find other ways to navigate. For example, GPS 'north' which can always point you to 0,0 on the globe. The second thing is the timing. The pole is currently "racing" towards Siberia[3], so it may have already started flipping. At 30 miles a year it would take 416 years to fully flip. That is well within the 7000 year window and only 4x the 100 year window. It is one of the more interesting confounding influences on climate change as changes in the magnetic field strength and orientation can change the amount of energy that makes it into the atmosphere from the Sun. That works both ways, either reducing the energy (more charged particles deflected) making it colder or increasing the energy (more charged particles impact the atmosphere) making it warmer. [1] https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/10/14/earths-magnetic-field-could-flip-within-a-human-lifetime/ https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/10/14/earths-magnetic-field-c... [2] https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358 https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358 [3] https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/magnetic-north-shifting-by-40-miles-a-year-might-signal-pole-r https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/ma...
- njarboe 8y agoPrevious estimates on the time it takes for a flip to happen are in the 1000-30000 year range[1]. That paper gives a 7000 yr average but the variance on the time it takes is likely large. The Berkeley article you linked to is on this paper[2] which makes a claim of that short flipping time. People in the field think it is quite an unlikely short period of time for a flip and we would need more evidence to firmly believe they can happen this fast. Sediments are notoriously complicated on how they record the magnetic field and the rates at which they are deposited at are difficult to determine. Source: I did my PhD work on the Steens Mountain reversal. It is the Earth's reversal with the most transitional directions recorded in much more reliable volcanic rocks. This was possible because of the huge volume of the Columbia River Basalts that were erupting at that time around 16.7 million years ago. Unfortunately it happened so long ago that direct radioactive dating of its length is impossible with current methods. [1]https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02459 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02459 [2]https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggu287 https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggu287
- raducu 8y agoBetteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
- isostatic 8y agoDoes Betteridge's law always apply?
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- davidkuhta 8y agoHat tip to the other two posters for providing serious responses. If you intended that as a light-hearted witty response (as I believe you did), then you got a chuckle out of me.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoSo what I'm hearing is the press should reframe their questions to get the results they intend. "Will world hunger continue into next year?"
- bluGill 8y agoThat is not a result they want though. World hunger it good for a few stories every year, less people would buy papers without world hunger. (war is better than world hunger for selling papers but they need something else once in a while or people start to recognize patterns and quit buying papers)
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoDamn their short sightedness!
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- justaman 8y agoI wanted to share one of my favorite sites: https://www.pssurvival.com/ https://www.pssurvival.com/ Pole shifts are popular among "preppers" which in my opinion tend to be quite eccentric. However this website is full of great information that we often take for granted.
- isostatic 8y agoI have no idea what that site is, but this is the introduction: This is a shift of the earth's crust with respect to the earth's core generated north and south magnetic poles. Earth's magnetic poles are created by the flow of ions in the earth's core and is somewhat closely aligned to be parallel to the axis of rotation. We expect about 90 degree shift of the crust as planet-X passes earth's orbit on its way through our solar system. The new North Pole will be off the coast of Brazil and the new South Pole is off the coast of India. It is associated with lots of other earth changes before, during and after the pole shift. See the following description for more details.
- justaman 8y agoYeah whoever made this site is bat-shit crazy. But there is tons of great information here. Anything from making soap the old fashioned way to brushed and brushless DC motors. Its really cool and wouldn't be the worst thing to have printed off and saved in a fallout shelter.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>and wouldn't be the worst thing to have printed off and saved in a fallout shelter. >6922 Files, 14.8 GB If things get real bad you could always burn it to keep warm. In print form it's probably a better use of space than a bunch of stuffed animals but I think you're probably better off getting a bunch of cheap android phones and sticking it on the SD card and using most of that space for something else.
- imglorp 8y agoI've always thought it might be cool to package up a bunch of literature on a stack of SD cards and package them with a low power e-ink reader and a solar panel to charge it, then market as a "reboot civilization" kit. The hardest part is actually finding a generic e-ink reader with an sd card slot that doesn't cost $500. It shouldn't need to run full android, just show a PDF or TXT, that's all it needs to do. An offline wikipedia dump, emergency medical manual and PDR, survival manuals, etc etc like this site might go well.
- wilkskyes 8y agoIs it true that when the magnetic field flips suddenly, plane autopilot systems can become confused and crash out of the skies, killing millions en mass?
- adrianN 8y agoThat would be surprising as the altitude control should be independent from the compass. I'd also wager that more than just the compass is used to determine course. Most likely a sanity check in the control software will kick in and return control to the pilot, just as if the compass(es) broke for some reason during flight.
- rory096 8y agoPrimary heading indication is the directional gyro[0] anyway. And magnetic flips don't happen "suddenly" in the timescale of a plane flight. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heading_indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heading_indicator
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoHow fast are the flips. I've known about this effect for maybe a couple of decades, but never heard any theories on how fast the flip is. If the flip is really slow, then that seems to lead to less human catastrophe, but more difficult perhaps for other species? edit: s/far/fast
- adrianN 8y agoThe problem with the flips is that they go hand-in-hand with a dramatic weakening of the magnetic field until the new orientation is established. During that time solar storms are not deflected as well and vulnerable electronics will be fried.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoIf my new tv gets fried during the apocalypse I'm going to be pissed.
- samdung 8y agoInteresting (and possibly related) article about the four yugas in hindu mythology. https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/science-behind-hindu-s-four-ages-chatur-yugas-magnetogeddon-may-destroy-the-world https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/science-behind-hindu-s-four...
- qwerty456127 8y agoIt says {Forbidden}. Any alternative location?
- jblz 8y agoHere's a mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20160530234212/https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/science-behind-hindu-s-four-ages-chatur-yugas-magnetogeddon-may-destroy-the-world https://web.archive.org/web/20160530234212/https://www.speak... Original link worked for me, fwiw.
- qwerty456127 8y agoSo where it is now? In Siberia?
- jesseb 8y agoAccording to this article[0] I happened to read the other day, Canada. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-field-baffle-scientists-north-pole-siberia-canada-world-1286507 https://www.newsweek.com/earth-magnetic-field-baffle-scienti...
- theandrewbailey 8y agoBetween Siberia and Canada. https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/ https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/ (switch view to Arctic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole#Modern_(post-1996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole#Modern_(po...
- lenticular 8y agoAs it says in the article, we don't have anything to fear at the surface. Reversals have never been associated with increased extinction. When the field does reverse, it becomes increasingly disordered with higher-order moments dominating. If I recall, the dipole moment of Earth's magnetic field is normally over 90% of the strength. The higher-order moments dissipate faster, so it doesn't reach as far into space.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoGiven there are lots of species that use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation this is highly surprising. Perhaps there have been mass extinctions but they're not readily found, or our timings are wrong so they don't appear synchronised? I wonder if there wouldn't be more seismic activity?
- njarboe 8y agoThe magnetic field also gets very weak (90% drop in intensity and the magnetic pole way down near the equator) quite often. These are call magnetic excursions. They happen at an average frequency of maybe 50 thousand years or so with a high variance. The last big one is called the Las Champ excursion and happened about 41 thousand year ago. Species that needed a strong magnetic field that points north or south to exist would have gone extinct long ago. These species must have ways to survive when the Earth's magnetic field is unstable and weak because that happens on timescales much shorter than species evolution. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event
- lenticular 8y agoThat's interesting. Magnetic reversals actually take some time to complete (a few thousand years). If it changes slowly enough, if animals navigate through a learned magnetic field rather than genetic instinct, they'd do fine.
- Izkata 8y ago> there are lots of species that use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation And (possibly) one directly for hunting: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/01/11/foxes-use-the-earths-magnetic-field-as-a-targeting-system/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/01/1...
- f3r3nc 8y agoNo way to download all? Going through one by one, it might be too late already
- coding123 8y agoI'm guessing it's actually in progress, we just won't know it for 100 years
- atulatul 8y agoA few trivia items from the BBC QI elves: "Jupiter’s magnetic field has two south poles." "Roughly every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun reverses, north becomes south, and south becomes north. The same thing happens on Earth, but only about once every 300,000 years." "The magnetic North Pole is moving about 55km per year at the moment. Last year it wandered over the international dateline and ended up in the Eastern hemisphere." https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1082639057556029443 https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1082639057556029443 https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1043545462186356737 https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1043545462186356737 https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1085145132591124481 https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1085145132591124481
- mr_toad 8y agoThe Sun has multiple magnetic poles that are in constant flux.
- openloop 8y agoNo:
- outsidetheparty 8y agoBetteridge's law of headlines applies (though it takes fourteen paragraphs to get there....) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- onetimemanytime 8y ago>>Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon? Yes. then proceeds to define "soon"
- njarboe 8y agoArticles on the fear of the Earth's field flipping are, as expected, not very realistic. The best current knowledge is that it takes thousands of years for the field to flip and the current fluctuations are within normal bounds. The wikipedia article on the Earth's magnetic field[1] is pretty good. See relevant quote from it below. Scientists recently updated the standard Gaussian coefficients used to describe the Earth's field a bit earlier than the usual 10 year adjustment. This is because the field has changed a bit quicker than the recent past and people are more interested in having a high accurate model these days, among other reasons. The release of this new model is why these kinds of stories are in the news at the moment. The Earth's magnetic field is created mostly by the convecting liquid iron/nickel outer core of the Earth. It is a quite turbulent system and can not be modeled very well for numerous reasons. Here are a few: The pressure and temperature is so high that depth (2900-5100km below the surface) in the Earth that is impossible to create similar conditions on the Earth's surface for more that milliseconds on milligram samples. The only measurements that can be made of the core are from seismic waves passing through thousands of kilometers of the heterogeneous Earth. We have decent measurements for the Earth's magnetic field only since people have been recording compass readings (1600AD or so) and really good global measurements only since satellite readings starting in the 1960's. IAAPM (I am a paleomagnetist)[2] and am happy to answer questions about this topic. "At present, the overall geomagnetic field is becoming weaker; the present strong deterioration corresponds to a 10–15% decline over the last 150 years and has accelerated in the past several years; geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value achieved approximately 2,000 years ago. The rate of decrease and the current strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks." [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field
- Pharmakon 8y agoWhen you say the pressure conditions can be recreated for milliseconds, is this using a diamond anvil or some other technique? Beyond that, I just wanted to thank you for this post, and your reply to someone else higher up in the thread. Reading the views of subject matter experts is what drew me here in the first place.
- tamaharbor 8y agoSo should I buy or sell compass-related stocks?
- tamaharbor 8y agoIs this field flipping man made? Let’s spend billions of tax dollars in an attempt to stop the field from flipping. Scientists are always correct.
- craftyguy 8y ago> Is this field flipping man made? No. > Let’s spend billions of tax dollars in an attempt to stop the field from flipping. What? > Scientists are always correct. No actual scientists are arguing that it is man made...