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Showing posts with label magnetic-pole-shift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magnetic-pole-shift. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

No Doubt. The Earth's Poles Are Shifting.

Any doubts that the Poles are shifting?  

Have you watched the placement of the Sun and the Moon lately?  How about the weather?  

Are you experiencing strange, unseasonable weather?  

These are evidence of pole shifting.  

Watch and read the evidence below.  There is strong evidence that the poles are shifting and that the rate of shift is accelerating.  

What does this mean for us?  Obviously, weather changes and plant growth patterns, drought versus flooding, levels of oceans, increased earthquakes that correlate to volcanic activity acceleration and more.  

Analyze for yourself the information I have placed below.  This is now a high scientific priority.


Feb-04-2011

Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms
Terrence Aym Salem-News.com

Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.
Superstorm
Courtesy: Weather Snob

(CHICAGO) - NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples…

Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather.

Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field.

When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.

Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth's history. It's happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth.

The magnetic field drives weather to a significant degree and when that field starts migrating superstorms start erupting.

The superstorms have arrived

The first evidence we have that the dangerous superstorm cycle has started is the devastating series of storms that pounded the UK during late 2010.

On the heels of the lashing the British Isles sustained, monster storms began to lash North America. The latest superstorm — as of this writing — is a monster over the U.S. that stretched across 2,000 miles affecting more than 150 million people.

Yet even as that storm wreaked havoc across the Western, Southern, Midwestern and Northeastern states, another superstorm broke out in the Pacific and closed in on Australia.

The southern continent had already dealt with the disaster of historic superstorm flooding from rains that dropped as much as several feet in a matter of hours. Tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed. After the deluge tiger sharks were spotted swimming between houses in what was once a quiet suburban neighborhood.

Shocked authorities now numbly concede that much of the water may never dissipate and have wearily resigned themselves to the possibility that region will now contain a new inland sea.

But then only a handful of weeks later another superstorm; the megamonster cyclone Yasi, struck northeastern Australia. The damage it left in its wake is being called by rescue workers a war zone.

The incredible superstorm packed winds near 190mph. Although labeled as a category-5 cyclone, it was theoretically a category-6. The reason for that is storms with winds of 155mph are considered category-5, yet Yasi was almost 22 percent stronger than that.

A cat's cradle

Yet Yasi may only be a foretaste of future superstorms. Some climate researchers, monitoring the rapidly shifting magnetic field, are predicting superstorms in the future with winds as high as 300 to 400mph.

Such storms would totally destroy anything they came into contact with on land.

The possibility more storms like Yasi or worse will wreak havoc on our civilization and resources is found in the complicated electromagnetic relationship between the sun and Earth. The synergistic tug-of-war has been compared by some to an intricately constructed cat's cradle. And it's in a constant state of flux.

The sun's dynamic, ever-changing electric magnetosphere interfaces with the Earth's own magnetic field affecting, to a degree, the Earth's rotation, precessional wobble, dynamics of the planet's core, its ocean currents and—above all else—the weather.

Cracks in Earth's Magnetic Shield

The Earth's northern magnetic pole was moving towards Russia at a rate of about five miles annually. That progression to the East had been happening for decades.

Suddenly, in the past decade the rate sped up. Now the magnetic pole is shifting East at a rate of 40 miles annually, an increase of 800 percent. And it continues to accelerate.

Recently, as the magnetic field fluctuates, NASA has discovered "cracks" in it. This is worrisome as it significantly affects the ionosphere, troposphere wind patterns, and atmospheric moisture. All three things have an effect on the weather.

Worse, what shields the planet from cancer-causing radiation is the magnetic field. It acts as a shield deflecting harmful ultra-violet, X-rays and other life-threatening radiation from bathing the surface of the Earth. With the field weakening and cracks emerging, the death rate from cancer could skyrocket and mutations of DNA can become rampant.

Another federal agency, NOAA, issued a report caused a flurry of panic when they predicted that mammoth superstorms in the future could wipe out most of California. The NOAA scientists said it's a plausible scenario and would be driven by an "atmospheric river" moving water at the same rate as 50 Mississippi rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Magnetic field may dip, flip and disappear

The Economist wrote a detailed article about the magnetic field and what's happening to it. In the article they noted:

"There is, however, a growing body of evidence that the Earth's magnetic field is about to disappear, at least for a while. The geological record shows that it flips from time to time, with the south pole becoming the north, and vice versa. On average, such reversals take place every 500,000 years, but there is no discernible pattern. Flips have happened as close together as 50,000 years, though the last one was 780,000 years ago. But, as discussed at the Greenland Space Science Symposium, held in Kangerlussuaq this week, the signs are that another flip is coming soon."

Discussing the magnetic polar shift and the impact on weather, the scholarly paper "Weather and the Earth's magnetic field" was published in the journal Nature. Scientists too are very concerned about the increasing danger of superstorms and the impact on humanity.

Superstorms will not only damage agriculture across the planet leading to famines and mass starvation, they will also change coastlines, destroy cities and create tens of millions of homeless.

Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.

A Danish study published in the scientific journal Geology, found strong correlation between climate change, weather patterns and the magnetic field.

"The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming.

"'Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics,' one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal.

"He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a reconstruction of the prehistoric magnetic field 5,000 years ago based on data drawn from stalagmites and stalactites found in China and Oman."

In the scientific paper "Midday magnetopause shifts earthward of geosynchronous orbit during geomagnetic superstorms with Dst = -300 nT" the magnetic intensity of solar storms impacting Earth can intensify the effects of the polar shift and also speed up the frequency of the emerging superstorms.

Pole reversal may also be initiating new Ice Age

According to some geologists and scientists, we have left the last interglacial period behind us. Those periods are lengths of time—about 11,500 years—between major Ice Ages.

One of the most stunning signs of the approaching Ice Age is what's happened to the world's processional wobble.

The Earth's wobble has stopped

As explained in the geology and space science website 
earthchangesmedia.com, "The Chandler wobble was first discovered back in 1891 by Seth Carlo Chandler an American astronomer.

The effect causes the Earth's poles to move in an irregular circle of 3 to 15 meters in diameter in an oscillation. The Earth's Wobble has a 7-year cycle which produces two extremes, a small spiraling wobble circle and a large spiraling wobble circle, about 3.5 years apart.


The above video shows people who rely on the position of the Sun and the stars for their survival and those factors have changed so much in the past decade that they are having to adjust ways that have been past down from the times of their ancient ancestors.


Not that I believe in groups that are complete doomsdayers, but observations that are made here are very interesting because they are made on what has happened...

Nancy Lieder
7 of 10 STATUS as of January 5, 2012

Posted by Nancy Lieder on January 6, 2012 at 11:30am
View Blog

Mariana Trench Collapse

Is the trench collapsing? Certainly buoys 52402 and 52403 are are signaling that. The Philippine Plate lies to the east of the Philippine Islands, and the Mariana Plate lies to the east of the Mariana Islands, and the Mariana Trench lies to the east of the Mariana Plate.

Mariana Trench
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench
The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands.

The Zetas predicted that the folding of the Mariana Trench would be SUDDEN. The Zetas also stated that the folding of the Philippine and Mariana plates in 7 of 10 Scenario 3 is KEY to acceleration of the 7 of 10 scenarios.

ZetaTalk Prediction 11/27/2010:
http://www.zetatalk3.com/ning/27no2010.htm
The folding of the Pacific plates that accompany the sinking of Indonesia during the 7 of 10 scenarios involves, as we have explained, the Mariana and Philippine plates tilting and flattening westward. The Mariana Trench is a zone where the Pacific Plate is subducting under the Mariana Plate. The Pacific Plate curves down at this point, plunging under the Mariana Islands which ride on the Mariana Plate. The trench will be suddenly closed, so that rather than a trench there will be the Pacific Plate scraping along the Mariana Plate.


ZetaTalk Prediction 9/17/2011:
http://www.zetatalk4.com/ning/17sp2011.htm
We have stated that the Sunda Plate will complete its sinking by the time the S American roll is at its peak, but not before. The folding of the Philippine and Mariana plates also must be almost complete before the S American roll can accelerate. Number 3 is likely to complete hand-in-hand with number 2 rather suddenly at a time when the Indo-Australia Plate lifts and plunges under the Himalayas.

Buoy 52402 shows that something dramatic occurred on December 13, 2011. Buoy 52402 is at Latitude 11.74N Longitude 154E out in the Pacific, just east of the trench and approximately 1/3 of the way to Hawaii from the Philippine Islands. What would cause this buoy to show a sudden drop of 15 meters (45 feet) on December 13!

A clue lies in the heaping waters shown by Buoy 52403, which lies along the trench to the SW of 52402. Water squirting out of a collapsing trench would end up in this vicinity, and it did! The waters on the Carolina Platelet are also not as deep as the deep Pacific, and would take more time to disburse a heap, thus. Per the Zetas, the trench did indeed collapse on December 13.

ZetaTalk Comment 12/31/2011:
http://www.zetatalk7.com/ning/31de2011.htm
When the trench collapses, the Pacific Plate suddenly takes a sharper angle when subducting under the Mariana Plate, pushing the Mariana Plate to accelerate its tilt and fold, which then accelerates the Philippine Plate’s tilt and fold. At the point of collapse there is suddenly MORE water just above the trench, moving in all directions. But such an adjustment is seldom smooth. Waves themselves have heaps and troughs as there is a tendency for water to move as a mass, cohesive. When the trench collapsed, it created a heap, but for buoy 52402 there was a trough reaction, the 15 meter drop on December 13, 2011. The water also moved south, along the deep trench, like along a funnel.

The Mariana Islands, on the lifting eastern edge of the Philippine Plate just to the west of the Mariana Plate, have been beset with quakes since, even during lulls affecting the rest of the world.

Have the heaping waters been noted by those nearby, on the Philippine Islands? Certainly the Mindanao tsunami...http://www.zetatalk8.com/newsletr/issue274.htm
on December 17 was caused by the disbursing waters. And just a quick end of the year snapshot for incidents in the Philippine Islands show continuing references to capsizing boats, “swelling seawater”, and a “storm surge” without an accompanying storm.

Waves Destroy 26 Houses in Aklan
December 28, 2011
http://www.philstar.com/nation/article.aspx?publicationSubCategoryI...
Apart from the damaged houses, several commercial establishments have been affected by the swelling seawater. Residents were obliged to put up piles of sandbags along the coastlines.


12 Saved as Boat Capsizes off Cebu
December 3,1 2011
http://www.philstar.com/nation/article.aspx?publicationSubCategoryI...
Twelve people were rescued after their motorized boat capsized off Lapu-Lapu City in Cebu.

State of Calamity Declared in Parts of Leyte, Cebu
December 31, 2011
http://www.philstar.com/nation/article.aspx?publicationSubCategoryI...
The low pressure area caused 14 flooding incidents, four landslides, three sea mishaps, and a storm surge, and damaged a seawall.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
7 of 10 Year in Review

7 of 10 Scenario 1, the tilting of India to put the Indus Valley in Pakistan at a 10 foot elevation loss occurred the latter half of 2010, as was acknowledged by NASA
http://www.zetatalk.com/newsletr/issue217.htm
by the end of 2010.


Monday, 12 December 2005
Magnetic north pole drifting fast
Aurora borealis
, AP

Alaska could lose its northern lights, scientists say

The Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America so fast that it could end up in Siberia within 50 years, scientists have said.

The shift could mean that Alaska will lose its northern lights, or auroras, which might then be more visible in areas of Siberia and Europe.

The magnetic poles are different from geographic poles, the surface points marking the axis of Earth's rotation.


Magnetic poles are known to migrate and, occasionally, swap places.

"This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada," Joseph Stoner, a palaeomagnetist at Oregon State University, told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

Wandering poles

Previous studies have shown that the strength of the Earth's magnetic shield has decreased 10% over the past 150 years.

During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 1,100km (685 miles) into the Arctic, according to the new analysis.

The rate of the magnetic pole's movement has increased in the last century compared with fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries, the Oregon researchers said.

The Oregon team examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes. Since the sediments record the Earth's magnetic field at the time, scientists used carbon dating to track changes in the magnetic field.


They found that the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last thousand years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia, but has occasionally moved in other directions.

Rate of change

At the present rate, the north magnetic pole could swing out of northern Canada into Siberia.

If that happens, Alaska could lose its northern lights, or auroras, which occur when charged particles streaming away from the Sun collide with gases in the ionosphere, causing them to glow.

The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831 and when it was revisited in 1904, explorers found it had moved by 50km (31 miles).

17 December 2010
Swarm satellite mission to try to sense ocean magnetism
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, San Francisco

European scientists are going to try to measure the movement of the oceans by tracing their magnetism alone.

The effort will be achieved using three super-sensitive spacecraft called Swarm, which should launch in 2012.

The magnetic signal of the tides sweeping around the globe has been seen before, but the new mission would aim to observe far more detail.

It should provide additional data on how the oceans transfer heat around the Earth, a key feature of the climate.

"When salty ocean water flows through the magnetic field of the Earth, an electric field is generated and this electric field again makes a magnetic field," explained Dr Hermann Lühr, from the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) and a leading investigator on Swarm.


"We hope to have the possibility to measure the ocean currents which are so important for climate dynamics, because oceans are transporting a lot of heat. The German Champ mission was the first to see at least the tidal signal, but with Swarm we want to be able to monitor the currents themselves."

The new mission is one of the several innovative European Space Agency (Esa) endeavours being discussed this week here at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest annual gathering of Earth and planetary scientists.

The major part of Earth's global magnetic field is generated by convection of molten iron within the planet's outer liquid core, but there are other components that contribute to the overall signal, including the magnetism retained in rocks.

...This approach is expected to make it much easier for Swarm to separate out all the different components of the global magnetic field.

Scientists say they still have much to learn about Earth's magnetism.

The global field, which shields the planet from high-energy particles emanating from the Sun, appears to be getting weaker, particularly over the South Atlantic where Champ data was used to show there had been a 12% reduction during the course of three decades.

It is in this so-called South Atlantic Anomaly that orbiting spacecraft experience most of their technical failures and where astronauts on the space station receive their largest dose of radiation.

Artist's rendering of a Swarm satellite (EADS Astrium)  
The Swarm satellites have the look of giant mechanical rats
 



Don't believe the Mayan's? After the above, watch this and re-evaluate what you think.
 

The Sun Does a Flip

NASA scientists who monitor the Sun say that our star's awesome magnetic field is flipping -- a sure sign that solar maximum is here.




NASA
Marshall Space Flight Center
Listen to this story (requires RealPlayer)

see captionFebruary 15, 2001 -- You can't tell by looking, but scientists say the Sun has just undergone an important change. Our star's magnetic field has flipped.
The Sun's magnetic north pole, which was in the northern hemisphere just a few months ago, now points south. It's a topsy-turvy situation, but not an unexpected one.
"This always happens around the time of solar maximum," says David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center. "The magnetic poles exchange places at the peak of the sunspot cycle. In fact, it's a good indication that Solar Max is really here."


"When looking at polar shift 2012, NASA and the government are covering up what they know will happen simply because they don't want to contend with widespread panic. There is little that would result in telling the public that these theories hold truth from scientific evidence except for creating huge waves of panic around the globe, which would result in hoarding of food and supplies, and general mayhem. So the government is working with NASA to keep this under wraps. But that doesn't mean you can't form your own opinion on the matter and take steps to prepare yourself to survive when the worst happens in 2012 by learning to live off the land.
Chris Mallory is a writer and researcher on Polar Shift 2012 Nasa"

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4739770

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Solar Flare Update 4-17-2011

SUN-EARTH CONNECTION: Even a small solar flare can reach out and touch the Earth. On April 16th, sunspot 1190 produced a relatively minor C5-class flare. X-rays from the distant explosion broke apart molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, creating a wave of ionization over Europe. Researcher Rob Stammes detected thesudden ionospheric disturbance or "SID" using a very low frequency radio receiver at the Polar Light Center in Lofoten, Norway:
The wave of ionization allowed signals from a terrestrial radio station to bounce over the horizon into Stamme's 23.4 kHz VLF antenna. That's what's shown in the upper panel. Now consider the lower panel: "There was also a small increase in radio noise directly from the flare itself at 56.25 MHz," points out Stammes. "Contact with the sun at VLF and VHF radio frequencies at the same moment gives me important information."
Readers, would you like to be in radio contact with the sun? Visit NASA's RadioJove web site for instructions.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Magnetic Field Weakening And Polarity Change

More signs of magnetic field weakening and disarray

February 5, 2011 – More evidence of magnetic field disarray in the onslaught of a speedy solar wind stream. This latest image was captured on February 5, 2011 when the solar winds accelerated to 608.1 km/sec conveying a proton density of 3.2 protons/cm3. The spectral pattern appears chaotic and disorganized and shows symmetry disparity.


Thursday, January 20, 2011

Difference in Pole Shifts Between North & South Poles


Pole Shift: North Races, South Crawls

400-years-of-magnetic-south-pole-shift
While the speed of the earth’s magnetic north pole shift has drastically sped up lately to about 34 miles per year (55 km), let’s look at what is happening with the south magnetic pole.
Every magnetic field has two polarities, North and South for example, and one might think that whatever is happening with one pole would be happening (in the inverse?) to it’s opposite pole.
Well as it appears, the earth’s magnetic south pole is not behaving similarly to it’s opposite north pole. In fact, it’s drift, or pole shift, is actually slowing down! Presently it’s only moving 3 miles (5 km) per year, only a tenth the speed of the north!
(Pole coordinate data sourced from NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center)
Not only that, but it is interesting to note that both the north and south magnetic poles are favoring one side of the earth – the south pole is heavily favoring one side, and continues to move further away from true south.
The south magnetic pole is actually 1,800 miles (2,900 km) away from the earth’s true south pole! That is a substantial offset.
The north magnetic pole is fairly near true north and is ‘only’ about 360 miles (580 km) away.
earth-magnetic-south-1,800-miles-from-true-south-pole
earth-magnetic-north-360-miles-from-true-north-pole


When the earth is visualized with its magnetic poles more offset and favored towards one side of the planet than the other (which it has been for some time – although the south magnetic pole is moving even further to the favored side), coupled with the large variance in shift speed between the north and south, explanations may seem bizarre.
Since we know that the earth’s magnetic field is generated from the spinning liquid molten iron Inner Core, is one part of the core churning differently than the other?
Could the Inner Core, or part of it, be offset somehow, causing the magnetic pole axis to pass through one side of the planet more than the other? Wouldn’t that cause the planet to wobble?
Is the iron consistency changing in one part of the Inner Core more than the other?
If the Inner Core is ‘centered’ with the rest of the earth, and the molten iron composition is considered to be relatively consistent, do these observations indicate that the magnetic axis is actually bending or warping as it passes through the planet?


These are all interesting things to think about (for some of us), and while being just a logical minded casual observer, there is no doubt that these earth changes are powerful ones – even if only occurring relative to the time frame of the planets life.
Take a look at the following graph and see the extreme difference in North versus South Pole Shift speed since about 1930. As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words…
Something’s happening up north…
graph-comparison-north-south-pole-shift
420-year-graph-of-annual-magnetic-south-pole-shift


As you can see, I spent a lot of time on graphics today ;)
Observe the magnetic pole axis tilt, and the fairly precise indication to the part of the planet that is favored more-so by proximity to the magnetic axis.
Could crustal movements, earthquakes and volcanoes be affected differently on this side of the planet than the other? The location is certainly right on top of the pacific ring of fire, and very near the general vicinity of Indonesia (most active volcanoes in the world), and located in the part of the world that gets the majority of earthquakes. It could purely coincidental, but who’s to say…
magnetic-north-south-pole-axis
magnetic-poles-favor-pacific-ocean
Checked your compass lately??




If you enjoyed this, or topics of preparedness, geophysical – current events – risks, consider our survival blog RSS feed, new posts by E-mail, or bookmark us at Modern Survival Blog
You totally have to read more from these folks.  They seem to have a great deal of information on what is going on...http://modernsurvivalblog.com/pole-shift-2/pole-shift-north-races-south-crawls/

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Clear Movement of Magnetic Poles. Proof From Geophysicist.

Great Job NPR for putting this out there!!!!!!



















 









NPR

Following A Wandering North Pole

text size A A A
January 14, 2011
The location of the magnetic North Pole is moving toward Siberia at about 40 miles per year — and every few hundred thousand years, the North and South poles switch positions entirely. Geophysicist Ronald Merrill explains what's known about the inner workings of the Earth's magnetic field.
IRA FLATOW, host:
You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.
You know those numbers on the runways at airports? Ever wonder what they mean? You know, like there's a Runway 18. You see them as you taxi around. Well, besides that being a runway number, that number represents the direction of the runway.
If you just add a zero to that 18, you get 180. You know what direction the runway is pointing in: 180 is south. Of course, so you're heading south on the runway, 180 degrees from magnetic north.
Well, earlier this month - it was interesting, an airport in Tampa had to close its main runway to renumber the directional sign on it. It had to change the number on the runway, and the reason was because the position of magnetic north is moving.
And so the compass heading onboard aircraft were not matching up with the headings on the signs anymore. In fact, the magnetic pole is moving toward Siberia at about 40 miles per year. Why? How?
Joining me now to talk about the Earth's magnetic field is Ronald Merrill. He is a professor emeritus in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle and author of the book "Our Magnetic Earth," published by University of Chicago Press. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
Professor RONALD MERRILL (Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington; Author): Thank you.
FLATOW: Things are moving that fast that they have to shut down runways now to repaint the signs?
Prof. MERRILL: Yeah, the magnetic field is constantly changing on the surface of the Earth. And in fact, it may surprise you and your listeners that the North Magnetic Pole, where the field is vertical, is not 180 degrees opposite to the South Magnetic Pole.
The North Magnetic Pole, as you mentioned, is moving very rapidly. It's now up about 85 degree latitude, while the South Magnetic Pole is only moving about three miles per year. And it's about 65 degrees latitude.
FLATOW: Are they ever going to converge someday?
Prof. MERRILL: Well, they could. To understand that, you have to understand where the origin of the magnetic field is, and that's deep inside Earth, in our core, which is iron-rich, and it's so hot there that you can't even have permanent magnetization.
In fact, the outer part of the core is so hot, it's liquid. And this liquid iron is moving about, it's boiling, much like you see in a pan of water. And just as you would, in a hydroelectric plant, convert the flow of water to make electricity, this moving iron produces electric currents, and with every electric current there's a magnetic field.
And so what we see at the Earth's surface is these magnetic fields from this very complex motions in the top of our core, and the field is therefore constantly changing.
Now, it doesn't help to describe the field that way to most of us scientists. So what we say is: Look, let's pretend it's magnetic down there, even though it's not, and we describe about 75 percent of the magnetic field by a dipole, essentially a bar magnet at the center of the Earth, it has two poles, and it's tilted about 10 degrees with respect to the rotation axis.
Now, that's only 75 percent. The other 25 percent is called a non-dipole field, and it has many ups and downs, and we have to add those two fields together to get the total field, your surface. That non-dipole field, on average, is moving westward at about .2 degrees per year.
FLATOW: So is that sort of floating around there?
Prof. MERRILL: Well, it's not - you can think of it as floating, in a sense, it's the magnetic field being carried along by the motions of this moving fluid.
FLATOW: Right, right, and when people - so when people say pole, and they get this mental image of a big bar magnet sticking in the center of the Earth, that's not an accurate representation of what's going on.
Prof. MERRILL: No, because it's too hot for permanent magnetization to be there. But scientists also describe it in terms of this dipole, this bar magnet.
FLATOW: Is this something we should be afraid of or fearful of, even if the poles do switch or meet?
Prof. MERRILL: Well, we have, from records in rocks, information of the Earth's magnetic field that goes back millions of years. And we now know that the magnetic field has reversed polarity - that is, our compasses would change 180 degrees, hundreds of times in the past.
The last time was 780,000 years ago. And during that reversal, which took about four or five thousand years, the intensity never went to zero. So some of the disasters that you see portrayed in TV and movies are not accurate.
FLATOW: And that brings up a question, let me go to the phones, to Kat(ph) in Ashland, Oregon. Hi, Kat.
KAT (Caller): Oh, hi, good morning. Thanks, I love your program. I had a question just about that. I was wondering: How quickly do those polarities reverse in the rock records? How quickly does that show? And if they did reverse now, how would that affect our electrical power grids? And I'll listen to the answer off the air.
FLATOW: Thank you, have a good weekend.
Prof. MERRILL: Okay, well, there's several questions there. The estimates for how long it takes for a magnetic field to reverse vary between about 1,000 years and 10,000 years. And we don't know the details of what the field does during the reversal. We know something about it but not the details.
We know that the intensity decreases. Now, the magnetic field of the Earth acts through what we call a magnetosphere, which protects Earth from the solar wind and magnetic storms that come from the sun.
So if the magnetic field intensity decreases, then we're more susceptible to magnetic storms, and these magnetic storms can affect our power grids.
FLATOW: Let's go to the phones, to Andre(ph) in Michigan. Hi, Andre.
ANDRE (Caller): Hello.
FLATOW: Hi there, go ahead.
ANDRE: My question is: Are you of the opinion that one of Earth's magnetic poles might have once been tidally locked onto the moon many billions of years ago, when the Earth and the moon were forming?
Prof. MERRILL: No, I don't think any mainstream geoscientists would agree with that. Certainly the moon was much closer to the Earth, and it certainly had tidal effects. Those tidal effects would affect the - or could affect some of the convention, the movement of the iron in the Earth's core, but there's no locking, like gravity. Now, the gravity is a different matter.
FLATOW: Different thing. We talked about the Tampa airport. One article about the airports quoted an FAA spokesperson as saying that not all airports would have to do this because of differences in the field from place to place. Is that correct?
Prof. MERRILL: That's correct. If I took a compass here in Seattle, it would point 20 degrees to the east of true north. If I did the same compass in Maine, it would be 20 degrees to the west. And it's because of this extra non-dipole field that it's making things very complex over the surface of the Earth, and moreover it's changing all the time.
Sometimes it goes up in some places and down in other places. Sometimes it moves mostly to the west in some places, but there are some places it moves eastward.
FLATOW: Is there one wacky place on Earth?
Prof. MERRILL: Is there one wacky place?
FLATOW: Yeah.
Prof. MERRILL: I would say that the North Magnetic Pole seems to be moving pretty fast right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
FLATOW: But, you know, people are going to say: Oh, this is the Bermuda Triangle. That's what causes it. It's moving around. Or this is, you know, someplace in Sedona or whatever like that. That explains the - the pole explains all of that. How do you answer those questions?
Prof. MERRILL: Not very well, actually.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Prof. MERRILL: You see them on the Internet. And people even talk about the whole Earth flipping over and waves of oceans coming across our continents and destroying us during a reversal. But no mainstream scientist believes those type of things.
FLATOW: Here's a tweet from TBoshop(ph), who says: Can a magnetic field be generated in a lab using the same principle of moving molten iron, as the Earth does, or is it theoretical?
Prof. MERRILL: Actually, the process we call is a Dynamo(ph), and that is being produced in laboratories. No model is complete. It's a very complicated thing, and even with supercomputers, we can't solve the equations today.
But there are Dynamo models, for example, in Maryland, that use liquid sodium rather than iron because it's a better conductor of electricity. There are some size issues. A large body, the magnetic field, if you turn off the motions, decays much slower. It decreases much slower in time than a small body. So they're all approximations in all these things.
FLATOW: GirlieGreenie says: I thought monopole did not exist.
Prof. MERRILL: Monopoles is a single pole, and it was first suggested by Paul Dirac, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist in a previous century, to exist. Scientists are looking for them, but nobody's ever found one.
FLATOW: I think she may have thought that you were using that in your explanation of the movement of the pole...
Prof. MERRILL: I certainly hope not.
(Soundbite of laughter)
FLATOW: Communication is tough in this business. Let's go to Sam(ph) in Cleveland. Hi, Sam.
SAM (Caller): Hi.
FLATOW: Hi there.
SAM: Hi, thanks for having me. I was actually curious as to the current theory where we have so much heat in the core of the Earth, and - yeah. How can it be possible that we have a generated magnetic field, when in the schools and universities it's taught that generated heat actually disorganizes magnetic fields? And I'll take my answer off the air. Thank you.
FLATOW: Okay. Thanks.
Prof. MERRILL: Okay. The heat that you're talking about that is for something like iron or a mineral called magnetite, which is common in rock. If we heat up those minerals or iron, it will lose its magnetization. Iron loses it at 770 degrees Celsius, you know, 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. And above that, it can't be magnetic. So we know therefore that in the center of the Earth, the magnetic field is not generated by something that's permanently magnetized. Instead, it's these electric currents that are being moved around by the iron-rich liquid.
FLATOW: Why such a difference in movement of the North and the South Magnetic Poles? Why is the north moving so much faster than the south?
Prof. MERRILL: Well, it's like - we look at the North Pole and the South Pole as special spots because the magnetic field is vertical. But if we look at the Earth as a whole, we find that some places are moving fast -changing fast, and some places are changing slowly. They're just not -don't happen to be vertical. So there's always going to be some places that are moving faster than others. The details of why any particular spot is moving is tied up in theoretical calculations that are different for different investigators. So we really do not know precisely why one spot in the Earth is moving faster than the other.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Prof. MERRILL: It might be interesting, though...
FLATOW: Yeah.
Prof. MERRILL: ...to know that that north magnetic pole was actually traveling southward between 1800 and 1850. It then turned around and started going northward. And as you mentioned, Ira, it is accelerating to the north today.
FLATOW: It's accelerating?
Prof. MERRILL: Yeah. It's been going faster. In fact, at the turn of the century, it was going about 30 miles a year. Now, it's about, as you mentioned, about 40 miles a year.
FLATOW: Wow. I didn't realize that. I thought maybe it was just this constant velocity (unintelligible).
Prof. MERRILL: But it may slow down...
FLATOW: Yeah.
Prof. MERRILL: ...in the next 10 years, and go in an entirely different direction. We don't know.
FLATOW: You know, we keep hearing that some insect and animals navigate by magnetism - birds fly. Maybe bees use it. They'll use the sun, too. Does that affect their navigation, the movement of the pole, the magnetic pole?
Prof. MERRILL: The - you're correct. Animals - all the way from bacteria, up to some primates - can sense the magnetic field.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Prof. MERRILL: And many animals, like many species of birds, actually use it in navigation, and so do fish, as well turtles and so on.
FLATOW: Right.
Prof. MERRILL: The field is changing slow enough that it probably doesn't have a major effect. If we were all of a sudden were to have a reversal of the field very sudden, then that would be an issue. But we don't think reversals occur that rapidly. And when geologists look into the rock record, we find that no species goes extinct for - we don't expect a species will go extinct when a magnetic field reversal occurs.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Talking about the moving magnetic pole this hour on SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, with Ronald Merrill from the University of Washington in Seattle.
So what is there yet that you would like to know if you had an unlimited check - to write a check to find out something about the magnetic poles, the fields? What do you need to know? What would you like to know that you don't know now?
Prof. MERRILL: For me?
FLATOW: Yeah.
Prof. MERRILL: Oh, I would like to know precisely the origin of the magnetic field, because we're still uncertain on that. I would like to know some of the questions that you've asked. What is causing this change in the magnetic field over time, what we call geomagnetic secular variation? I would like to know a lot more about planetary magnetic fields, and magnetic fields that exist outside of our solar system. For example, there are some objects called minute(ph) powers that have magnetic fields that are a million, billion times the size of Earth's magnetic field. And these - size of these minute powers are only a diameter of, say, 20 kilometers. How would that happen? How can they produce those strong magnetic fields?
FLATOW: Hm. Does our moon have a magnetic field?
Prof. MERRILL: It has a very weak magnetic field due to magnetization in rocks at the lunar surface. We think it may have had a dynamo, like Earth, back over four billion years ago to have produce the magnetic field that magnetized these rocks.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm.
Prof. MERRILL: But we don't know.
FLATOW: So it was not - those rocks did not come from a time when it was still part of the Earth?
Prof. MERRILL: No. In fact, the moon never - wasn't really part of the Earth. We think that there was a Mars-sized object that collided with a polaritz(ph) and spun off a lot of debris. And then the moon, created from this debris, and the Earth simultaneously in the same orbit(ph). But the idea is that the moon came from the Earth itself was an old theory...
FLATOW: Yeah.
Prof. MERRILL: ...by a fellow by the name of George Darwin, who was the son of Charles Darwin, but is no longer accepted in science.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. What - do you have any idea what's the next airport that might have to change its runway markings?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Prof. MERRILL: I have no idea whatsoever.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Prof. MERRILL: In fact, until I read the news report, I didn't even know that Tampa International Airport was changing theirs.
(Soundbite of laughter)
FLATOW: Well, I guess, anything near Tampa would have to, right? I mean, Sarasota, maybe, something like that? If Tampa is going to do it, they're not that far away. Miami?
Prof. MERRILL: I - that's something you have to ask federal regulators.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Prof. MERRILL: I have no idea. But, I mean, obviously, you want to have correct compass information, even though I think other navigation tools like GPS are the primary navigation tools.
FLATOW: Yeah. Well, pilots always know that they have to check their magnetic deviation when they look on their charts and things - their maps and charts, whatever.
Prof. MERRILL: Yeah. And they all...
FLATOW: Because it's moving all the time, and they have to write new maps.
Prof. MERRILL: And they have compasses on all the major airlines.
FLATOW: Yeah. So it's an important thing. And I'm glad you've taken the mythology out of it and given us some fascinating things to talk about. Thank you very much, Dr. Merrill, for being part of SCIENCE FRIDAY today.
Prof. MERRILL: It's my pleasure. Thank you.
FLATOW: There you go. Ronald Merrill, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. And you want to know more about the Earth, our magnetic Earth, he's written a book, "Our Magnetic Earth," published last year by University of Chicago Press.
We're going to take a break. When we talk - when we come back, we're going to talk about another pole - kind of electrical thing. This is our electrical grid, not the magnetic field, but the electric grid that, you know, that supplies our power. It's getting more rickety by the year. What would it take to engineer a new smart grid?
We'll talk about that when we get back. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.
(Soundbite of music)
FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow, and this is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR.
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