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So, tangental question. I have read about the Earth's magnetic poles moving in the past. I have also read that the poles are likely to move or start moving agai
by korethr 7y ago
So, tangental question. I have read about the Earth's magnetic poles moving in the past. I have also read that the poles are likely to move or start moving again sooner rather than later. Would a large geomagnetic storm influence that? I.e. would it make the poles more likely to shift, or kick them into motion? Would it make the poles less likely to shift or hold them in place? Setting aside the disruption of a major change to the cardinal directions, would a shift of the poles be disruptive to infrastructure like the storms in the article are said to be?
- kylek 7y agoI don't know the answer to your question (though I'm curious too!) but wanted to link this nifty map from NOAA re:pole movements- https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/ https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/
- njarboe 7y agoThe Earth's magnetic field is created from electrodynamo activity in the liquid iron core of the Earth. A solar super storm would have basically no influence on the millions of cubic kilometers of conducting and convecting iron. After the storm had passed, the magnetic field on the Earth's surface would be unchanged. As to your last question, when the Earth's field flips direction (polarity reversal) or tries to flip but returns to the original polarity (magnetic excursion), the Earth's magnetic field drops to around 10% of the normal field strength and is no longer dipolar. This would cause many current satellites to be destroyed by the solar wind, but since drops in the field to this level takes hundreds or thousands of years, there is little to worry about.