Earths Magentic Pole - APOD

A magnetic compass does not point toward the true North Pole of the Earth. Rather, it more closely points toward the North Magnetic Pole of the Earth. The North Magnetic Pole is currently located in northern Canada. It wanders in an elliptical path each day, and moves, on the average, more than forty meters northward each day. Evidence indicates that the North Magnetic Pole has wandered over much of the Earth's surface in the 4.5 billion years since the Earth formed. The Earth's magnetic field is created by Earth's partially ionized outer core, which rotates more rapidly than the Earth's surface. Indicated in the above picture is Ellef Ringnes Island, the location of Earth's North Magnetic Pole in 1994.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

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I knew this. Did you have a question? An interesting little tidbit: the earth’s magnetic field is actually over due for a "flip" in direction. It has gotten weaker over that last few hundred years than it has at about any other time, with the exception of right before the last time it flipped. So don’t invest in a compass manufacturer

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Cato:

Its absolutely thrilling.

Imagine what the world would be like topsy turvy- you're in Antartica close to 780,000 years ago and your needle points down.
I always wonder what effect the polarity has on organismd- some of the wierdest creatures long extinct are found in the oldest layers.
The body is nothing more than a bolus of chemicals regulated with electricity.
Electricity is force conjugal with magnetism.
So naturally you can deduce that magnetism has an effect on developement without being thought a quack.
No?
We are overdue for a flip:

"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. "

I always imagine these weird 'ancient' creatures, long extinct, resurrected with the polarity change.

 

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Or for that matter - don't invest in property - it may end up in the Artic.

 

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and in stranger aeons even death may die.
...............................-H.P. Lovecraft

 

I don’t understand?

Also it will not just flip tomorrow, it will get very weak before/after it happens. So its not like your compass will just turn around, it will get less and less accurate and then gradually get more and more accurate in the wrong direction. It will probably not happen in our lifetimes but perhaps in the next 1000 years (there is no way to tell for sure)

 

Maxzuk's joke gone bad.

There is no 'wrong' direction. Tidy up your thinking.

 

I didn't mean it as a joke:

http://www.crystalinks.com/poleshifts.html

 

Maxzuk:

Ah, nice site.

Yet the only thing we could use as 'evidence' is a flimsy theory:

"In a polar region there is a continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically distributed about the pole. The Earth's rotation acts on these nonsymmetrically deposited masses of ice, and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the Earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a movement of the Earth's crust over the rest of the Earth's body, and this will displace the polar regions toward the equator. - Albert Einstein The Path of the Pole by Charles Hapgood - Theory of Crustal Displacement "

Even if its my lord's.
Nice to think about, but Cayce commenting makes one lose their appetite for its validity.

 

oh contraire monfraire:

There is no wrong way as far as the magnetic field is concerned. However, if you are looking at a map that designates north as towards Greenland/Canada/Alaska/Siberia/ect and you look at your “flipped” compass it will say read “north” as being in the direction of Antarctica, and thus “wrong”. Or you could say that your map is wrong and your compass is right.

 

So what is this thread about? The presumed upcoming magnetic pole flip? Is it due? There have been 300,000 years between flips but also some 25 - 50 million years ( these periods are called super chron). A collapse of the magnetic field, followed by full "normal" recovery have been observed much more frequently. The last of these Paleo Magnetic Excursions, (PME) the Lachamps excursion was 40,000 years ago, a brief, more local event, the "Mono Lake" excursion happened 26,000 years ago. Before that we had the "Blake" Excursion at 100,000 years ago. So the odds are that we're heading for a new PME only. PME's last about 6000 years.

Also the last real flip, the Brunhes Matuyama event, has been redated very recently to 789,000 years ago.

 

I wonder... is it only the earth's magnetic poles that change, or do they change at the same time all over the universe?

 

Not likely. it's supposed to be a private game of the Earth interior, called the Geo-dynamo.

http://www.geo.uu.nl/~forth/people/Corl/Teaching/Kuang_Bloxham_97.pdf
http://www-geol.unine.ch/cours/geol/coredynamo.pdf

 

Can someone explain simply in "English" WHY the poles change?

 

What678:

Simple: We don't fucking know.

Most plausible theory among others- the earth's core is a mass of molten metal, mainly iron. What is intriguing is that the molten metal is outside of a hard core- one would think otherwise, that all cores should be like chocolates with gooey middles.
Imagine chocolate covered cherries with the cherry goo on the outside, or Raisennets with the raisin pulp smeared on the outside.

Anyhoo- since it is molten iron we are dealing with (alloyed with other metals, too lazy to look up) we tend to think of it as having magnetic properties that influence the earth's envelope.
And so, when the liquid metal moves, because its “goo”, so too does the magnetic field it exhibits.
This, or its me secretly flipping the poles just to watch helpless humans squirming.

 

Wierd ancient creatures eh? 700,000 years ago the world's creatures were mostly the same as they are today; but there were such things as mammoths and woolly rhinos, glyoptodonts and giant sloths, diprotodons and- hey, if the pole flip can bring them back I say bring it on!


double-u, double-o, double-el why;
woolly rhino...

 

Thanks!

Those theories don't explain much. We should first find out the whole truth about why magnets repel/attract to each other. I'm interrested if anyone else knows. I think I know it, but I won't tell...

This attraction and duality, is, of course, not just in magnets, but in everything.

Small children always ask "why" to everything until we can't answer them. When we go too deep, maybe there is no answer. People think they know something, just because they put names on things.

 

Please excuse me for the Cayce reference in my last link.
If you have the time- - I would like you and all readers to consider this:

http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/tropical_paradise_at_the_cretace.htm

It’s obvious that the author of this website believes in a placid earth and not one of Catastrophe. It proposes that the reason for the “Tropical Paradise at the Cretaceous Poles” is due to the pole areas warming to the extent that they could support tropical flora and fauna. It seems to assume that the geographical areas under the current poles have been there for a very long while.

I believe that this is false logic for the following two reasons:

1. If the static pole areas generated enough heat to maintain a “Tropical Paradise” under the poles - the rest of the Earth
would be so hot that nothing (flora or fauna) could thrive elsewere.

2. The Cretaceous period was from 144 to 65 Million Years Ago – in my opinion that’s not enough time to allow the land in question to move from the “Tropical Paradise” to the deep freeze of the
poles based on plate tectonics.

The way I see it – only a shift in the Earth’s Spin Axis could bring this senero about.

 

There is also a possibility that the magnetic field is caused by natural nuclear reactors in the Earth's core. How great this possibility might be is open for debate. One thing is sure, not many in the earth sciences are taking this seriously, but it is an interesting theory nonetheless.

Here's the page for the major (maybe only) proponent of this theory. And here's a thread here at sciforums dealing with the subject.

 

Well i would say that the magnetic feild of the earth is driven by the rotational axis of earth, and that the magnetic pole onces reaching the earths axis will collaspe. just to be broad in statement it will happen in this century. a progress detailed approach would say that it will occur about 2039. being more tech it could happen at anytime given the proximty of the magnetic poles to the earths axis. the debate with point in time or date is due the discrepancy defining the actual center of earths axis. given the earths wobble, the axis must wobble as well. (the axis is 2 miles in area)
keeping the near date assigned in mind, the magentic poles most likely will switch in time with the suns 11 year cycle or magnetic pole reversal, this occurs as the final disruption collaspeing the feild, but just as well either of the solstices in september or march could cause the same disruption collaspeing the earths magnetic feild, the suns time of reversal is promient to mark the time of collaspe. this is all possible because as the magnetic feild reaches the earths axis it becomes more unified and exstend in to the earths region of space, like a still water, it is then disrupted by the suns reversal triggering the collaspe of the internal body generating the feild.
the length of time between magnetic pole reversal define by carbon dating of carbon 14, produced from nitrogen gives a date of about 8,000 years giver or take a few years for sublote changes.


DwayneD.L.Rabon