NASA ON EARTH'S MAGNETIC POLE REVERSAL

NASA WAS DOING A GOOD JOB OF REPORTING ON THIS WAY BACK IN 2003. 

"Scientists have long known that the magnetic pole moves. James Ross located the pole for the first time in 1831 after an exhausting arctic journey during which his ship got stuck in the ice for four years. No one returned until the next century. In 1904, Roald Amundsen found the pole again and discovered that it had moved--at least 50 km since the days of Ross.

The pole kept going during the 20th century, north at an average speed of 10 km per year, lately accelerating "to 40 km per year," says Newitt.

Sometimes the field completely flips. The north and the south poles swap places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago. Are we overdue for another? No one knows.



Why is Earth's magnetic shield weakening?

NORTHROP GRUMMAN HAS A VERY MATTER-OF-FACT ARTICLE ABOUT ALL THIS THAT BEGINS...

"Geomagnetic reversal effects are natural and spectacular, but they could also destroy the world as we know it.
While that may sound dramatic, renowned science journalist Alanna Mitchell’s book “The Spinning Magnet“ revealed that the next time Earth’s magnetic field flips, it could seriously damage the electric infrastructure that defines our modern civilization.

Scientific American noted that in the past 200 million years, reversals have taken place approximately every half-million years. The last reversal happened around 780,000 years ago, so we’re due for a flip.

What Does the Future Hold?

The good news is that we have plenty of time to prepare. The bad news? The magnetic field is much weaker, as low as a tenth of its normal strength, according to Futurism. A gradual change could mean that we’ll have years without the invisible protective shield between Earth and space.

With a weak electromagnetic field, radiation from space could possibly make some regions of Earth uninhabitable and cause entire species to go extinct. But first, according to Mitchell, we would have problems with sensitive orbiting satellites, which control electric grids and could cause “a domino run of blackouts that could last for decades.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. We don’t know whether this will occur in our lifetime. Even if it does, the flip could take hundreds of years, and geomagnetic reversal effects would be mostly gradual."

Earth's magnetic field is what protects our planet from harmful space radiation. 

In a pole reversal, we'd lose 90% or so of that shielding. 

No one knows how we'd survive that.

NASA HAS WRITTEN VOLUMES ON THIS TOPIC OVER THE YEARS, SOME NOW ARCHIVED, SOME NEW.

IT'S NOT "ALARMIST" MATERIAL, JUST FACTS.
IT'S HAPPENED BEFORE AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.

AS NEWSWEEK REPORTED IN 2018,  "Cosmic radiation expert Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that the next pole reversal could likely render some areas of the planet unlivable."

SOME, BUT LIKELY NOT ALL.

HOW DOES ANYONE PREPARE FOR SUCH AN EVENT?
NO ONE REALLY KNOWS, BUT WE DO KNOW EARTH HAS SURVIVED SUCH FLIPS IN THE PAST.

AN ARCHIVED "MASTER LIST" OF ARTICLES FROM NASA ON 'THE GREAT MAGNET EARTH' CAN BE ACCESSED <HERE>. 

IN 2017, SALON (AND OTHER NEWS AGENCIES) REPORTED: "Without a magnetic field, our atmosphere would slowly be stripped away by harmful radiation, and life would almost certainly not exist as it does today."


DID YOU KNOW THAT OVER AN EXPANDING AREA OF OUR WORLD, THIS POLE REVERSAL IS ALREADY A REALITY?
IT'S CALLED THE 'SOUTH ATLANTIC ANOMALY' AND IT'S GROWING EACH YEAR.

FROM THE GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER IN MARYLAND, THIS ARCHIVED STUDY HELPS EXPLAIN THE BASICS, A BIT OF THE HISTORY AS TO HOW WE CAME TO REALIZE THE POLES HAVE FLIPPED.   

Get a Straight Answer

Questions submitted by e-mail to the author of "The Great Magnet, the Earth." Some of them (marked ***) came in response to an earlier site "The Exploration of the Earth's Magnetosphere" and are also found there in the question-and-answer section. Only some of the questions that arrive are listed, either because they keep coming up again and again--on the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field, for instance--or because the answers add extra details, which might interest other users.

A pole reversal: Scientists discuss an anomaly in the Earth’s magnetic field.
"A magnetic field collapse is centered in a huge expanse of the Southern Hemisphere, extending from Zimbabwe to Chile, known as the South Atlantic Anomaly.

The magnetic field strength is so weak there that it’s a hazard for satellites that orbit above the region – the field no longer protects them from radiation which interferes with satellite electronics.

And the field is continuing to grow weaker, potentially portending even more dramatic events, including a global reversal of the magnetic poles. Such a major change would affect our navigation systems, as well as the transmission of electricity.

These analyses reveal an astounding feature: There’s a patch of reversed polarity beneath southern Africa at the core-mantle boundary where the liquid iron outer core meets the slightly stiffer part of the Earth’s interior. In this area, the polarity of the field is opposite to the average global magnetic field. If we were able to use a compass deep under southern Africa, we would see that in this unusual patch north actually points south.

This patch is the main culprit creating the South Atlantic Anomaly.
 In numerical simulations, unusual patches similar to the one beneath southern Africa appear immediately prior to geomagnetic reversals.


EXACT MAGNETIC NORTH HAS MOVED MORE THAN 600 MILES FURTHER NORTH SINCE IT WAS FIRST PEGGED.
THE MOVEMENT HAS INCREASED FROM 10 MILES PER YEAR IN THE 1800s (19th CENTURY) TO ABOUT 28 TO 40 MILES PER YEAR NOW.
NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN WHY.

OUR ENTIRE MAGNETIC FIELD IS WEAKENING. 
2,000 YEARS AGO, EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD WAS MANY TIMES STRONGER THAN IT IS NOW.
AGAIN, NO ONE KNOWS WHY.
IT HAS DROPPED 10% SINCE WE FIRST ACQUIRED THE ABILITY TO MEASURE IT.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, FEB. 1, 2018:
"Electromagnetic disruptions in space can also be incredibly damaging to the technologies we depend on.

There was a near miss in 2012 from an absolute super-storm that the sun let loose. This massive, once-in-150-years event happened to be released when the sun was facing away from our Earth. Had it been a week or two earlier, it would have been directly facing our planet and the forensic analysis suggests that we would have been sent back to the Victorian age in terms of our electrical systems had that happened.

The fact that it was such a near miss and so well recorded by satellites allowed scientists to go to the governments and academics and say, “Look, this was a really close thing. It could have completely destroyed our electronic systems, shouldn’t we start preparing for that?” 

The North magnetic pole is absolutely running through the Northern Hemisphere at 55 kilometers a year to the northwest. That’s an indicator that something unusual is happening inside the core. We also know that the dipole is weakening fairly dramatically.

Does that tell us that a reversal is at hand?
Scientists simply do not have enough information to make that conclusion. What they say is that it’s incontrovertible the poles will reverse again at some point."

READING ALL THIS, I WAS REMINDED YET AGAIN OF THE VERY HARSH REALITY THAT WE MODERN HUMANS FACE, THAT DAMNED FEW WILL BE AT ALL PREPARED FOR: TOTAL LOSS OF ELECTRICITY FOR PERHAPS DECADES.

IT'S NOT A MATTER OF "IF", BUT WHEN, AND WHEN IS UP FOR GRABS.

NOT AT ALL BEING AN ALARMIST, BUT I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THIS BEFORE AND FEW SEEMED READY TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY.

MAYBE IT'S TIME TO GET AS READY AS WE CAN BE?
BUT HOW?

What is an Electromagnetic Field?

While magnetism is fascinating, it has also been historically misunderstood. According to Physics.org, Earth’s magnetic field exists because the planet’s solid iron core is surrounded by liquid metal.

According to NASA, the flow of liquid iron in Earth’s core creates electric currents that generate the magnetic field. This electromagnetic field provides an invisible shield that blocks solar and cosmic rays.

Flip-flopping Poles

Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed many times in the past, but scientists can’t predict when the next reversal will occur. In other words, a magnetic field flip is coming, we just don’t know when.

Scientific American noted that in the past 200 million years, reversals have taken place approximately every half-million years. The last reversal happened around 780,000 years ago, so we’re past due for a flip.

What are the potential outcomes of swapped North and South Poles?

Compass needles would be wrong, and animals that use Earth’s magnetic field for navigation — such as birds, salmon, sea turtles, whales and butterflies — could get temporarily disoriented, according to National Geographic.

Mitchell warns that a reversal could destroy anything electronic, including home appliances, satellites, wireless devices and the electric grids that make all these items work.

In an essay on Undark.org, author Alanna Mitchell wrote, “We have blithely built our civilization’s critical infrastructure during a time when the planet’s magnetic field was relatively strong, not accounting for the field’s bent for anarchy.”


New Study Shows How Rapidly Earth's Magnetic Field Is Changing

"According to scientists' best estimates, the field is now weakening around 10 times faster than initially thought, losing approximately 5 percent of its strength every decade. But they don't really know why, or what that means for our planet.

But despite the overall message being 'don't panic', scientists still know relatively little about our magnetic field, so in 2013, ESA launched a trio of satellites called Swarm, which measure Earth's magnetic field from signals coming from Earth's core, mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere, and magnetosphere.

Using that data and those from other satellites, they've just released the clearest map so far of exactly how our magnetic field is changing - where it's weakening and strengthening - and what's causing those shifts. Importantly, it reveals just how fast these changes are taking place.


MY PRIMARY CONCERN IS THE INCREASED COSMIC RADIATION'S EFFECT ON BOTH THE UNBORN AND THOSE OF US ALREADY ALIVE WHEN THIS HAPPENS.

SECONDLY, HOW WOULD WE HIGH-TECH HUMANS GET ENOUGH FOOD TO SURVIVE SANS ELECTRICITY AND OUR VEHICLES, ALMOST ALL OF WHICH WOULD HAVE ELECTRIC COMPONENTS BLOWN TO HELL?

AFTER ALL, MOST FOLKS CAN'T EVEN BUILD A DECENT FIRE TO COOK OVER, AND FOOD SUPPLIES WOULD TAKE DAYS TO WEEKS TO ARRIVE, NOT A GOOD THING WHEN WE THINK ABOUT REFRIGERATION BEING GONE, AND IF FOOD WOULD STILL BE AVAILABLE WHEN FARMERS WOULD HAVE TO RESORT TO OLD METHODS OF GROWING AND HARVESTING.

THIRD, HOW MANY LIVES WOULD BE LOST BECAUSE WE WOULD NO LONGER HAVE THE ABILITY FOR "ADVANCED MEDICAL TREATMENTS"?

FOURTH, HOW WOULD WE COMMUNICATE?

ALL SOMETHING TO SERIOUSLY CONSIDER, NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE POLE FLIP, BUT BECAUSE OF THE TRUE REALITY THAT WE CAN ALSO EXPERIENCE ANOTHER "CARRINGTON EVENT" AT ANY TIME THAT OUR SUN SENDS OUT SUCH A BLAST AGAIN, OR IF SOME 'ENEMY' LAUNCHES AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE ATTACK ON US.

IT PAYS TO BE ALWAYS PREPARED, PEOPLE OF EARTH.
IT'S NECESSARY TO CONSIDER SUCH THINGS.
DENIAL WON'T MAKE IT GO AWAY, BUT WHAT WE CAN ACTUALLY DO TO PREPARE IS ABSOLUTELY UP FOR GRABS.







//WW