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The Earth's core: the enigma 1,800 miles below us
- politician 14y ago"It’s a place where pressures bear down with the weight of 3.5 million atmospheres, like 3.5 million skies falling at once on your head." I shouldn't be overly critical, but, well, that one's not working for me.
- trafficlight 14y agoYeah, what exactly does the weight of 1 sky falling on your head feel like? Feels pretty decent to me.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago1 megabar (roughly 1 million atmospheres) is equivalent to a thousand tonnes of pressure on every square centimeter of your body.
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y agoIt’s a place where the term “ironclad agreement” has no meaning, since iron can’t even agree with itself on what form to take. This is good writing to most people. It is fun and interesting, etc. But my brain hates it. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is the kind of fact heavy writing I prefer. But me and people like me are in the minority.
- draggnar 14y agoIt is funny how regarding the polarity flip they just say "don't worry, you'll be dead.". Ok that may be true, but what would happen? If the rate of polarity switch is exponential, 10% in the last century could end up being, oh dec 12 2012? Even if that is just a silly mayan thing, what would theoretically happen? We get pelted by radiation?
- ChuckMcM 14y agoGenerally the models have it becoming fairly distorted in various ways and then strengthening again in the opposite polarity. It never goes to 'zero' because there isn't a model where the core stops moving. But there could be some 'local' poles in addition the primary poles. Think of it 'aurora borealis at the equator' kind of weird but not 'sleeting sheets of coronal mass ejecta raining death on helpless flora and fauna.' Of course nobody really knows, we have models, we have guesses, we have theories. I've not seen any credible theories that result in the field going away but it doesn't mean they aren't out there.
- jpxxx 14y agoAs I understand it, the opposite polarity isn't a guarantee. The weakened magnetic poles wander for a period of time. Once the magnetic field reasserts itself, the magnetic poles return to the physical poles, and if they're opposite, so be it.
- Retric 14y agoAlso, your ancestors went though this millions of times while living long enough to have kids. So, while it may be unpleasant chances are it's just going end up with lightly different lights in the sky and at worse a small increase in cancer risk.
- __alexs 14y agoThe last one was about 780,000 years ago, sometime around the start of the Middle Pleistocene. The earliest known Neanderthals are about 300,000 years old. So no, none of our vaguely recent ancestors have lived through one. Plenty of Mammals have though!
- Retric 14y agoMammals are also your ancestors. And, the reversal takes 1,000-10,000 years so /20 and you get 50 to 500 generations per reversal. More importantly, the magnetic field can only stop charged particles which don't travel vary far though the atmosphere anyway as in a few feet and they hit something.* PS: Someone mentioned OMG particles, however they ignore the magnetic field anyway.
- mistercow 14y ago>As if the inside story of our planet weren’t already the ultimate potboiler, a host of new findings has just turned the heat up past Stygian. I hope, when old media finally dies, that this sort of "clever" news-writing dies with it.
- MPSimmons 14y agoThe author of this piece REALLY wants to write fiction. I can appreciate the florid tones in a human interest piece, or in an epic tale, but time and time again, I found myself wanting more information where instead, I got a bit of fluff. It was well-written fluff, but still. Facts, please!
- JonnieCache 14y agoThe BBC did a great Horizon documentary on The Core recently where they visited some researchers and looked at some shiny machines which attempted to replicate the conditions at the core and grow iron crystals or something. It talks about local variations in the earth's magnetic field as well. I recommend it.
- cnbeuiwx 14y agoI would go for D) Scientists dont have a clue. Because despite all human hubris, we are pretty much in the dark ages. When we have learned how to sustain ourselves without raping the planet, then maybe we can at least be called civilized. Although still a very primitive species. Humans dont like viewing themselves as primitive and limited, but we very much are. We are unaware of the alien species constantly being around us, we think 90% of the DNA is "junk" because we dont understand what it does, we call space "empty" because we dont see whats there, etc. Its all very much based on hubris and ego. Very very primitive. I often feel like Im watching a society that is completely nuts. Valuing paper more than the planet that is giving us life every second of every day (!). Ok, rant over... its just mind boggling...
- rsanchez1 14y agoI think you have that tin foil hat on a little too tightly.
- lukifer 14y agoEverything is primitive, in that it is the origin for the things to come. The way I think of the situation is that our species and its civilization are frightfully young, with all the arrogance and naïveté that entails. Here's hoping we're not the kind of teenager that kills ourselves by crashing the family car.
- redwood 14y agoIf heat is coming up 3x faster than expected, isn't there a good chance that this could have a material affect on global climate? Perhaps this is yet another significant piece of the chaotic climate record.