MAGNETIC FLIPS

Written and assembled by William Hamilton III (2005)

 

 

  The earth generates its own magnetic field which periodically flips polarity over thousands of years.  Paleomagnetism, the magnetic field and polarity found in ancient rock strata shows this flip has occurred throughout the history of our planet.  Scientists report that such a polarity reversal may happen in the near future as the strength of earth’s magnetic field has been declining.

 

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. 1

 

 

Magnetic stripes around mid-ocean ridges reveal the history of Earth's magnetic field for millions of years. The study of Earth's past magnetism is called paleomagnetism. Image credit: USGS.

 

Also from reference 1:

 

“Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time--contrary to popular belief--the magnetic field does not vanish. "It just gets more complicated," says Glatzmaier. Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti. Weird. But it's still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from space radiation and solar storms.”

 

 

Above: Supercomputer models of Earth's magnetic field. On the left is a normal dipolar magnetic field, typical of the long years between polarity reversals. On the right is the sort of complicated magnetic field Earth has during the upheaval of a reversal.

 

   In November 2003, PBS television presented a special on magnetic storms on its program NOVA.  This programmed focused on the declining state of earth’s magnetic field, the coming magnetic pole shift, and its potential impact on life on earth.

 

   But now scientists have made a startling discovery. It seems there's a storm brewing deep within the Earth, a storm that is weakening our vital magnetic shield.

PETER OLSON (Johns Hopkins University): The Earth's magnetic field has been our protector for millennia, and now, it appears, it's about to go away.

JOHN SHAW (University of Liverpool): The Earth's magnet field is getting weaker rapidly.

MARIO ACUNA (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center): We cannot guarantee that the magnetic field of the Earth is still going to be there a thousand years from today.

NARRATOR: Is our invisible shield about to disappear?

JEREMY BLOXHAM (Harvard University): The question is not if that's going to happen, it's when that's going to happen.

NARRATOR: Could the Earth really lose its magnetic field? And what will happen if it does? Up next on NOVA: Magnetic Storm. 2

   The most startling report in this program came from geologist Rob Coe.

NARRATOR: No one has ever experienced a magnetic reversal. If this is really the beginning of a flip, what exactly will happen next?

One man who may know, is geologist Rob Coe. For 25 years, he's been coming to Steens Mountain in Oregon, a vast heap of hundreds of ancient lava flows.

ROB COE (University of California, Santa Cruz): Sixteen million years ago there was a huge series of eruptions here. You can pick out literally hundreds of lava flows over on that wall. Each line delineates a different lava flow. It's over 3,000 feet of overlying flows.

NARRATOR: What makes Steens special, is that 16 million years ago, when this lava was erupted, the magnetic field was in the middle of a flip. Taking samples from dozens of flows all the way up the mountain, Rob and his colleagues have pieced together a detailed record of this magnetic reversal, although it's so surprising that not everyone accepts it.

ROB COE: What we found as it started to reverse was the strength of the Earth's field decreased dramatically, by 80 or 90 percent.

NARRATOR: The field started out pointing south, but as it weakened the direction of the field began to change erratically. After 300 years, it had swung a full 180 degrees to point north, and the field strength started to recover.

ROB COE: But it couldn't hold that polarity, and it fell back to...reversed and the intensity crashed again.

NARRATOR: Once more the Earth's magnetic shield practically disappeared, this time for 3,000 years. What was left was changing so fast that Rob found a flow that captured these wild gyrations even as the lava cooled.

ROB COE: And what we found was even harder to believe. The quickly chilled margins in the bottom and the top had one direction, like that of the underlying flow, and the middle portion had a direction that was sixty degrees farther away. It was just as though, while the flow cooled, the field had moved sixty degrees, which if you calculate it out, that comes to about six degrees of movement per day. If we were observing this with a compass, you would be able almost to see the motion with your eye. It was truly astonishing and extraordinary.

   The fact that the magnetic shift could happen as rapidly as six degrees per day indicates that the final phase of a flip can happen in about one month’s time.

   Author and researcher Patrick Geryl has concluded that when the sun flips magnetic polarity in 2012, our own earth will also follow suit.  He says,

   “In 2012 the next polar reversal will take place on earth. This means that the North Pole will be changed into the South Pole. Scientifically this can only be explained by the fact that the earth will start rotating in the opposite direction, together with a huge disaster of unknown proportions.”3

   Patrick Geryl has written a book, The Orion Prophecy, in which he claims that his research of ancient Mayan and Egyptian codes has enabled him to determine precise dates in history when previous cataclysms have occurred and gave him the key to predicting the next cataclysmic event which centers on the now famous date of the winter solstice of 2012.  Has misinterpreted the codes  and is he crying out like Chicken Little saying that the sky is falling?  If so, then we have little to worry about and sleep peacefully every night until then.

   However, as we have seen, there are periodic catastrophes, even ELEs (Extinction Level Events) that have occurred in the distant past, but at no time has such event occurred during an advanced stage of civilization with earth-orbiting satellites as we have today as far as we know.

   Also, we see geological, ecological, and climatological changes occurring now that seem to be happening at a greater rate than we have seen in written history except for the legends of Atlantis and Lemuria.  Some of these changes have already been mentioned in my essay Cosmic Time Cycles and Clues by Jason. 

   This is a good reason to examine the possibilities and produce a reasonable hypothesis as to why such magnetic changes could occur in the foreseeable future.

   “There is strong evidence that the Milky Way galaxy contains an ordered, large-scale magnetic field of the value 10-10 tesla (0.1 nT). This field configuration has been explored in the past through various methods which include analysis of starlight polarization, modeling pulsar or Faraday rotation, and Zeeman splitting of hydroxyl masers in regions of star formations. This Zeeman splitting of atomic or molecular lines indicated the direction and magnitude of a component of the magnetic field in a cloud of gas.”4

    The Solar Systems "Bobbing" Motion

As the solar system orbits in the Milky Way, it has a cycle where it "bobs" up and down.


This is an "edge-on" view of the Milky Way. As the solar system goes around the Galaxy, it has been found that the earth moves up and down like a horse on a merry-go-round. Following traditional kinematics, earth would experience the greatest induced gravitational forces in this cycle when it changes direction because the acceleration would be greatest at this point.

This bobbing up and down creates acceleration and deceleration in a cyclic manner, similar to the classic explanation of a pendulum. 5

   I have shown this in my essay Cosmic Time Cycles and it is an important clue to the periodic catastrophes that have occurred to our solar system in the past and makes it possible to predict future events as the critical points of our solar galactic orbit are the points where we cross the galactic plane.  I have also pointed out the indication that the precession motion of the earth also points to lesser cataclysms where we might be reversing our precessing motion every cycle which indicates changes in the earth’s rotation.

   As the earth moves "up" in this bobbing motion, the earth's magnetic field would be oriented one way -- "north" or "south". As the earth moves "down" in this bobbing motion, the earth's magnetic field would be oriented the opposite way -- "north" or "south".    

   Another researcher states,

   “In the year 2012 the earth reaches an extreme point

in a cycle of approximately 26,000 years. The open magnetic field lines at the north pole of the earth will be pointing towards the sun, receiving a peak amount of solar particles. The sun's 11-year cycle of activity will also influence earth's weather more strongly during this time.

Could galactic solstice be contributing to global warming, the greenhouse effect, and el Nino?” 6

 

  Is the Earth's magnetic field reversing now? How do we know?

Measurements have been made of the Earth's magnetic field more or less continuously since about 1840. Some measurements even go back to the 1500s, for example at Greenwich in London. If we look at the trend in the strength of the magnetic field over this time (for example the so-called 'dipole moment' shown in the graph below) we can see a downward trend. Indeed projecting this forward in time would suggest zero dipole moment in about 1500-1600 years time. This is one reason why some people believe the field may be in the early stages of a reversal. We also know from studies of the magnetization of minerals in ancient clay pots that the Earth's magnetic field was approximately twice as strong in Roman times as it is now.

Dipole Moment from 1900-2000

The rapid decay of the earth’s magnetic field from 1900 to 2000

Even so, the current strength of the magnetic field is as high as it has been in the last 50,000 years, even if it is nearly 800,000 years since the last reversal. Also, bearing in mind what we said about 'excursions' above, and knowing what we do about the properties of mathematical models of the magnetic field, it is far from clear we can easily extrapolate to 1500 years hence. 7

   We are already seeing a major extinction event occurring in our ecosystem as of the date of this writing (September 1, 2005) and many amphibian species are disappearing.  And this happening before any possible future cataclysm so there is no doubt that the earth is now changing at an unprecedented rate due to natural and manmade causes. 

   This report is written with the intention of alerting everyone to a potential danger to our biosphere on earth and is not intended to alarm people.  The proper action to take is to prepare for disaster on a global scale and stop our petty wars and expenditures of money on accelerating the destruction of our environment.  We need to network and organize people to prepare earth ARKs for the survival of humanity and civilization in the near future if we intend to bring balance back to earth and advance to a species that will eventually produce the technology to explore the universe.

  

  

 

 

 

 

References:

 

 

1.       http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/29dec_magneticfield.htm

2.       http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3016_magnetic.html

3.       http://survive2012.com/

4.       http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/RebeccaRudberg.shtml

5.       http://www.grandunification.com/hypertext/Magnetic_Polarity_Flips.html

6.       http://www.vortexmaps.com/htmla/galactic.htm

7.       http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/reversals.html

8.