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Magnetic Poles May Be About To Flip
AGD writes "According to the Guardian, Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically. . The article goes on to say 'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before -- as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping over, when north becomes south and vice versa.'"
The date for the flip will be 5/5/2005, according to Sightings.
If the magnetic field vanishes, surely our compasses will stop working?
OMG I hope they figure out when this happens so I can jump at the last second to avoid getting smashed.
i thought south was finally due to be north, should i start making reverse compasses?
i hereby patent the above idea.
In related news, the Earth's computer systems imploded after they began to run backward.
How is santa going to navigate under those conditions?
perhaps he better upgrade rudolph.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
to call my hero Bruce Willis?
Why is it, I only just fall out of bed and switch on my computer, and this is the headline I am greeted with.
Damn, its good to be alive.
And here is the link: Poles are about to shift
I'm too stupid to preview.
'Could be in the next 1000 years', according to the article...
A little less concerning :-)
The effects of a pole switch can be seen here. For your convenience it includes both a Summer and Winter view.
There can be no particular date.
The change will be gradual, with about a thousand years of no field. But I wont worry about it. There is no precedent of extinction due to pole reversal.
If primitive beings could survive so can we. There must be some mechanism by which the earth wards of the effects. Maybe some thing in ionosphere. It kind of difficult to beleive that something which couldnt make anything extinct 250000 years ago will do it now on a species which spends most of its life under radiation shields(read buildings)
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
In addition, many species of migrating animals and birds - from swallows to wildebeests - rely on innate abilities to track Earth's magnetic field. Their fates are impossible to gauge.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Could this be the end of the GNU project?!
http://www.zetatalk.com/poleshft/p00.htm
It's been looming for a long time now - we're about 10,000 years over due.
Scientists study volcanic rocks, and see which way their poles are aligned. Over time, there have been quite a few flips, and stages where there has been no field at all.
Interesting to see what qill happen to a culture that depends on magnetic polarity..
Man, with no magnetic field, we'll prolly have some kick-ass looking auroras all over the planet. The boiling atmosphere thing doesn't sound quite as fun though. =/
I'm wondering: how did life survive the other dozens of other times the pole flipped?
What can humans do, besides burrowing or mutating?
Suddenly, global warming (the artificially-induced kind) doesn't seem like that big of a long-term threat.
Has anyone thought that humans have been 'polluting' the earth's magnetic poles with massive magnetically-disturbing installations for a while now? Electro-magnetic pollution from electrical-usage anyone? Why haven't we thought of this before?
Australia will become on top of the world and no longer the "arse end of the world". We rule!
Meat is murder, I eat chicken.
I wouldn't worry folks, one would imagine that in a few years the technology to take space shuttle up and get Bruce Willis to blow the sun will be available.
Is it just me or does hollywood have to buy in to every doom prophecy to make a poor action movie about it?
So are we all going to die from this or not?
I'm fed up with these xenophobic jokes about those crazy Poles and how they are always 'about to flip'.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I could be wrong but wasnt the ozone layer formed due to cosmic radiation impacting our O2 atoms and combining them into O3?
This might just fix our ozone hole!
1. Buy 10,000 compasses
2. Scratch out N, S, E, W
3. Replace with (in same order) S, N, W, E
4. Sell on eBay
5. Profit!!!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
...and if there is no shift, what then? :)
Who are you going to prosecute? God Allmighty?
First off: we are not all gonna die. It has been 800,000 years since the last time the poles flipped. At that time, our ancestors were walking around, munching on wooly mammoths an giant sloths, etc., armed with such amazing modern tech as sharpened flint and fire. If they can take it, so can we.
Second, we have very little knowledge about how the poles are going to switch. There seems to be two options:
1. The poles are going to disappear, then reappear on opposite sides of the planet.
2. The poles will migrate over the face of the earth until they have effectively flipped over.
However, as geophysics usually shows us, there is a third, and much more complicated option, that is more likely. Simply put, the poles will weaken, and then split up into smaller magnetic zones, which will then wander all over the surface in an extremely complicated manner, and then coalesce on the oppposite sides. If you think this is a crackpot idea, you should check out past issues of Nature.
I'll also point out that no one really knows how the planet's magnetic field is generated. It is DEFINATELY not analogous to a regular bar magnet, because the core of the earth is much too hot to sustain magnetization of iron.
When the poles shift in the novel, the best chance for survival is at the pivot points--locations halfway between the old and new poles.
Pumping shit into the atmosphere for something like 150 years now has had nothing to do with it?
Crackpot, yes, but where do they get those ideas... ZetaTalk.
Then screw global warming. I'm buying that SUV :->
... Dr Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. 'On Mars, when its magnetic field failed permanently billions of years ago, it led to its atmosphere being boiled off.'
.. steady on there Dr.Murdin! That's quite a brave thing to say as if it's a fact. That's just on theory, and an interesting one to, but you cannot prove this yet. I'm sure there are lots of other reasons why Mars atmosphere is the way it is now.
Whoa
'On Earth, it will heat up the upper atmosphere and send ripples round the world with enormous, unpredictable effects on the climate.'
Arh! I think it will make some lovely daytime aurora, and generally play havoc with electrical equipment.
Mars is exposed to this kind of solar radiation, but it's atmosphere stays fairly chilly! The only solar radiation that seems to affect its temperature is the infra-red kind.
I'm willing to bet this article is nothing more than pre-hype for the movie The Core.
Insert joke about tinfoil hat here
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
According to Sightings, it was to happen immediately due to something with planetary alignments -- though I know the last one was May 5, 2000 -- or some other cosmic phenomenon which would immediately accelerate the polar flip drastically.
I really miss that show, though they still play re-runs. I used to sit in front of the TV with a tinfoil hat on.
Seems like pre-press releases are the way to hype new movies these days! Hollywood has it all figured out. Create some plot that involves something far-fetched but science based.
Then have a few "scientists" release articles that talk about the phenomenom. Then leak it to slashdot. Then release a movie. It becomes a hit.
See: Armageddon, Blair Witch Project, etc.
(suckers!)
but take away their infrastructure and they will start struggling.
Take a look at the early Industrial Revolution Cities in England. So overcrowded a plan was needed.
The solution : criminalisation of poverty. That way the poor could be killed or transported.
The sudden loss of computing would be totally devastating in the short term. And for mnay of us that could be as long as we live.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Flip your compass around, and it's as good as new!...if you can read backwards. I hate media hype, anyone mind linking to a decent non-profit driven science site or blog?
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I'm not really so sure that a flipping or loss of magnetic poles would really be so catastrophic to life as we know it...
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Now, couldn't this be another theory about the extinction of the dinosaurs (and humans too quite soon...)?
Damn I need to buy a north pole compliant monitor when they flip:P -Southern Hemishpere Dude
Quit Slashdot Today!
be sure to use only two data points.
according to another article that somebody else linked above, (here) this conclusion isn't based on an ongoing survey of the earth's magnetic field over the last 20 years (as implied by the observer article), but rather on the comparison of current data to a single set of data taken 20 years ago:
But Ørsted is the first satellite to take a snapshot of the Earth's magnetic field for 20 years, and such scant data makes it difficult to predict future shifts.
so while this may make a great shock news story (or hollywood movie plot) it hardly seems like anything approaching significant scientific research worth getting particularly alarmed about.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I'm suprised no one has posted this.
Does anyone know if a flip in the poles would have any impact on magnetic storage?
If so, get burnin!
[TROLL]
Vote a Republican administration into power, and the next thing you know, the magnetic field is gone.
[/TROLL]
that our toilets will start flushing the other direction?
it's gonna be interesting to see what happens to things like shortwave radio and satellite comms...
C|N>K
Could we reverse the polarity of the neutron flow ? :-)
On the bright side, if the poles flip, Earth's north pole will actually be a magnetic north.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Can this explain it?:
:) (when the last revelsal was presumed to have happened.)
/ interior.html / moon_magnetic_field.html&edu=high c ience/magnetism/magnetic_materials.html&edu=hi gh 9 92152 9 03,837058,00.html
"A planet's magnetosphere is provided through its magnetic field. To create a magnetic field, a planet or moon must have magnetic material such has iron, which is warm enough to move around to form currents within the planet."
And isn't earth(s core) cooling down? - Can't this affect our magnetosphere? If the magnetic materail stop flowing?
My imaginary plot (IMHO):
Now I'm thinging that when earth switched poles, the core coold down, reversal happened, sometime after that earth got hit by a large enough meteor to restart our core (how elese could the core be restarted? there wasn't atomic weapons and the like back in those days, no! Good ol' fashion meteors had to suffice : )). Then earth keept it's (reverse) position till it coold down again, and re-reversed itself again. Sometime after, BAda'BOOM eine large enough meteor struck again, restarted our engine, and we keept on ticking.... untill soon enough (if we think 1000 year or more is soon..) when our core will stop flowing.
Can someone please look up how long ago earth was struck by a large enough meteor to turn earth in to a giant blob of lava? : )
I put my money on lets say 780 000 to one millon years ago
Earth cooling down:
Here's the tricky part; How much must the earth's core cool down for reversal to happen? Because for it to cool down entirilely it will take more than 1000 years.
Reference:
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/moon
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/physical_s
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Consultant: The MS bug (Magnetic Shift bug) is like the classic Y2K bug.
Businessman: What's that?
Consultant: It involved a near global catastrophy which occured aroung the 19th century. Only the speedy responce by excellent programmers saved civilisation.
Businessman: How does this affect me?
Consultant: You need a team of 25 programmers, at least, to write bug fixes for the software in your toaster so that it can cope with the reversal of the magentic field.
Businessman: But I thought the toaster is AI and can learn these things?
Consultant: Trust me - your toaster needs this because...
Businessman: OK, OK -sigh-, spare me the details... how much?
Consultant: -rubbing hands- Well...
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
"which couldnt make anything extinct 250000 years ago"
Are we REALLY really _re-a-lly_ reeeeeeaaaaaly s-u-r-e about this? The fact that many species managed to survive is no indication of how much did not survive.
I particularly don't care if we humans survive, if it will mean the end of life as we know it (say for example, enough food). We can be very advanced, but if for any reasons growing crops gets harder we'd be in real trouble feeding 5B humans.
unfinished: (adj.)
By the time this has any effect, we'll all be dead.
My children will be dead.
Their children will be dead.
So it won't affect anyone I know.
So why worry, particulary since we can't do a damned thing about it?
The date for the flip will be 5/5/2005, according to Sightings.
Woohoo! I guess that means I'll become a chick magnet. Three more years and I can get rid of my pr0n collection...
What's this "Given that temperatures at such depths rival those of the Sun's surface"?
Here's my silly little concern:
How might this affect things like GPS systems, the internet, and/or similar electronic devices that are in some way tuned to the magnetic fields of the planet, or at least susceptable to fields? Are there any indications of just how much flux happens when the poles flip?
Just a thought.
Does this mean the Earth will want to spin the other direction, or is the Earths spin controlled by other forces, and not magnatism? Besides, what magnetic pole is currently the positive side, and what is the negative side? Also, How would this affect the commercial airlines with their fancy expensive compases? Does it really matter considering that the Earth might have problems when the magetic sphere of protection lets the evil radiation monsters thru the window? We might all jsut get cancer and die, right?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
The Earth's magnetic poles are actually the wrong way round at the moment - the noth pole is magnetic south. The only difference will be that the red end of the compass needle will point south, and anything else that depends on the earth's magnetic field will get confused.
I'll also point out that no one really knows how the planet's magnetic field is generated.
Sure we do. It's from dynamo currents caused by convection in the (liquid) outer core.
Magnetic field flips happen when turbulence grows enough to disrupt these patterns briefly.
This is why Jupiter has a much stronger magnetic field than Earth (huge liquid metallic hydrogen layer, and a very powerful internal heat source), and why the moon has almost no magnetic field (no liquid core; the only field is the one that was "frozen in" when the moon first cooled).
Beam me up, Scottie.
When I started reading the article, I was just sure they would point out that this is another sure effect of the over-consumption of fossil fuels by the US. I guess they decided to save that for a followup article and conclude this one with ad blurb for an upcoming film. It's nice to see them using some scientific restraint.
For a lark, I did the calculations for artificially imposing a magnetic field if the Earth ever lost its own.
:).
It turns out to be feasible even today, though horribly, horribly expensive. You'd build a mesh of copper cables around the equator (or superconducting, but copper's losses aren't that bad for this). Then you'd slowly ramp up the current until you have a magnetic field comparable in strength to today's.
Ramping up would be slow because of inductive power storage. The current loop and associated magnetic field store a *vast* amount of energy, all of which needs to be provided in order to bring the field up to strength. The present power output of all electrical plants on the planet over a decade or so would do it, if I remember correctly, so this is feasible. The power cost to maintain the field, even with copper cables, is much lower; put, say, a 10% tax on electricity, and you've paid for the extra plants to feed the mesh.
You'd use a mesh instead of a single cable _because_ of the amount of stored energy. If you break the current path of an inductor, current flows anyways, arcing across the gap. This only dies down as resistive losses across the gap dissipate the power stored in the inductor. Think about this - all of the inductor's stored power is dissipated in one place (the break), and we're storing an awfully large amount of power in this current loop. If the loop was a single cable and this cable was broken, you'd get something in the range of a 10-gigaton yield at the point of breakage. A mesh provides many alternate current paths, so breaks from sabotage or just plain wear can be repaired safely (as long as you overspec the current rating enough to allow the other paths to safely take up the load).
A copper cable a hundred metres wide, or ten thousand one-metre cables, would do the trick. You might _have_ to use copper, too; even if you spread the cables out to make a more uniform field near the Earth's surface, field strength near each wire would be much greater than the breakdown point of most superconductors.
We'd probably never bother doing this, but it's a fun thought experiment
The article actually says "could disappear over the next 1,000 years" This could be interperted as it will disappear and be gone for the next 1,000 years OR as it will slowly dissapate over the next 1,000 years. After reading the article the quotes "...show some can last for thousands of years" and "... have lasted only a few weeks" lead me to believe that they believe that IT could happen any time and last 1,000 years with no protection. I wonder how my great childern will look as morlocks?
Back in the Claremont/Byrne/Austin days, we survived that, we'll survive this.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
most terrifying thing about that article for me was not only that Hollywood is turning it into a craptastic movie, but also demonstrating the horrifying simplifications of logic that are foisted on the "common man" all the time. E.g., they bore a hole into the earth and use a nuke to "halt the reversal"!!! If Wim Wenders was directing it, they'd just live in their stupid caves and realize that, maybe, the reversal is something that has to happen.
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
with the Holywood garbage left out.
loz
It seems to me that the relevant question should be, "what devices rely on magnetic compasses?". With GPS around I'm not too sure what does. Getting that Compass Merit Badge may get tougher tho.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
On the plus side equatorial auroras should be cool. Can any people better informed confirm if this will happen?
Excuse me for being a dinosaur, but what will those old cassettes you have in the back of your closet sound like once the magnetic poles flip? Backwards? Out-of-phase? Inside-out? Paul is Dead? Long live Paul?? ARgggghh!
Optic fibre might be fine but what about RAM? I take it that the increase in high energy particles hitting us will randomly flip a few bits? Pretty easily fixed with redundancy but still bad.
Someone making that new movie thought up a great campaign. I see this as nothing more than one of those extremely unlikely events that makes a movie, and then makes to to the press.
Breaking out the tin-foil hats doesn't seem like such a bad idea after all.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Poles flipping, fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling! 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!
-- he's not heavy, he's my sysadmin!
Ugh, I keep reading posts of people complaining about how we will all die because the magnetosphere will completely disappear. This seems to be a misinterpretation. The earth will just have no definitive poles. Besides, if the earth did completely lose it's magnetosphere whenever this happened, the last time it happened would have completely stripped away all atmosphere and life on the planet, which didn't seem to happen...
Close the world.
This kinda freaks me out though..
Berto
If I can live for decades with my face inches away from an electron particle accelerator pointed in my direction, no problem!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Hollywood has it all figured out. Create some plot that involves something far-fetched but science based.
Ok.....
Blair Witch Project
Please outline the 'science' of The Blair Witch Project.
- silicon affected
- more cancer in general
- more energy onto earth as a whole
As one of my lecturer put it:-
"I don't know why all these people are worrying about asteroids; we're going to fry when the poles reverse in your lifetime"
A blog I run for the wealth
You can prove anything in a computer simulation. Whether it will happen or not is a totally different story, but for sure you can get funding if you tweak your variables properly. In geek terms, look at most video games where I can take a rocket blast and still survive, even though my hitpoints are lowered. Sure games are not true simulations, but neither are true simulations perfect, or often even close. It's a focus on one specific item with all the variables included to prove only that point. Believe the simulation worked; don't believe the simulation is correct.
All of a sudden some scientist picks something up, then a few more jump on the bandwagon, and then by the time we see the article, the whole theory is written in stone, even though the article contains very little fact -- for all we (the readers) know it could be pure speculation. The article makes bold statements and doesn't quote any proof. So take it with a huge grain of salt. How do we know that "Gauthier Hulot of the Paris Geophysical Institute" isn't regarded in his field with the same amount of controversy as the Drs. Igor and Grichka Bogdanov who are physicists that supposedly "don't know how to do physics" ?
And then the article mentions Hollywood!?! Yah, that sheds a lot of creditable light on the whole theory. Now are we are either: dealing with a Hollywood film house that picked up the idea from scientists, or scientists who want to ride on the tails of pop culture?
But we all love this dramatic stuff about the world ending, so it's no wonder that everybody -- whether scientist or check-out attendant, mathemetician or word perfect user -- jumps on the bandwagon. Enjoy your drama as we have all done here at slash/dot., but seek proof and fact before believing it will actually affect your real world. There are too many "important" people out there that believe they know what they are talking about or have agendas. It's hardly possible to spend all the needed time (as a reader outside the scientific fields) to gather the facts, proof, and knowledge needed in a world overloaded with information both true and false. Just find a couple articles from scientists that refute one another. That will help to provide a more balanced perspective. For example, read this message board for some real discussion about the theory at hand, instead of discussion about a newspaper article.
For example, you can get some real facts about Field Intensities During Polarity Transitions and Excursions linked from Message #15 in the discussion board.
The articles and theories are very important, but they still exist to be proven wrong, especially when they are relatively new.
was responsible for the ozone hole. Guess not.
I certainly hope I don't see software like this coming out: "Magnetic Pole shift Compliancy software" ;P
This is *obviously* a tactical move by the compass manufacturers. They want everybody to have to upgrade their compasses.
If they don't give me food, then I hit them, and if they still won't give me food... then I hit them again... (Maybe I should work out a better plan) Oh well, there's always venison.
Synopsis:
EARTH IS DOOMED!
Solution:
President (played by Morgan Freeman) meets with Special Emergency Response Team, discovers that all primary systems designed to prevent the Destruction of Earth are useless because they were all designed to shoot down missiles from Korea and China. Cabinet advisor recalls a brilliant, 'loose cannon' scientist/oil rig captain/handsome hollywood actor who 'just might be able to save us.'
Handsome actor collects racially-diverse crew including both genders and several archetypes. They build a giant drill, which breaks at the last minute. Handsome actor has flashback to childhood, when he accidentally made a sinkhole in the beach with a toy shovel and is able to dig the remaining 10 miles with his fingernails and teeth.
Team plants Nuclear Device Designed to Save Us All From Certain Death and detonates it, but of course it just makes things worse. Handsome actor inserts wrench into Earth's core, solving the problem, and then dies of radiation poisoning after making love to the attractive, sweedish scientist whose role (other than that) in the movie is as vague as her scientific credentials.
That's just my idea, though. I'm sure theirs will be totally different!
In your face Big Brother!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
no, he means they, from the third world countries, that need far fewer resources that are likely to fail in order to survive.
Who's with me!!!1111
Seriously though, something catostrophic WILL happen some day, so I think we need to get people living on the moon, on Mars, or maybe even a moon of Jupiter.
Sure a catostrophe may not happen in our lifetime, but whenever it does happen, it will probably take us by surprise because there's always the security thought that "this won't happen to me." Well it can and will.
Woa! Drilling into the Earth's core to set off and explosion to halt the reversal of the magnetic feild shift. If Jerry Bruckheimer ever heard about this . . . !
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
I didn't think about that scenario. I hope all my records are not stored on magnetic media though....
Reversals happen every 250,000 years or so, and as there has not been one for almost a million years, we are due one soon.
What? If there hasn't been one for a million years, I think a much more reasonable conclusion is that the "every 250,000 years" statistic needs some refinement.
Does this mean that all electrical devices will run backward once they flip?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
And the human race REALLY needs to evolve. Most people agree that most people are stupid. Maybe some good old-fashioned radiation-based random genetic alterations are just what we need to cure the small-mindedness which plagues 99% of the human population.
The solution, according to the film, to be released next year, involves scientists drilling into Earth's mantle to set off a nuclear blast that will halt the reversal.
Isn't that Hollywood's solution for everything?
If this has happened every 250,000 years, it's obviously not a threat to the existence of life on this planet.
Apparently this article is a flare, to get the public thinking about magnetic field reversal, to hype the upcoming disaster-movie The Core. Expect this story to appear on CNN soon.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I used to think this to, but Titan has even less gravity than Mars yet keeps an atmosphere that is about 50% thicker than Earths.
Titan's also a lot colder than Mars.
The criterion for keeping an atmosphere, if I remember correctly, is for the mean velocity of gas molecules at the ambient temperature to be less than 10% of escape velocity. That keeps the fraction of molecules _at_ escape velocity low enough for evaporation to be negligible.
So, a colder world can get away with a shallower gravity well.
This effect is real and well-known, but consequences are just beginning to be studied. It will be, after all, the first reversal during human history (self-written, at least). The field magnitude is believed to have dropped about a factor of two since biblical times, based on records of auroral observations, so it appears to be well under way at present. I don't have a handy reference, but I believe there was an article this past year in the Eos Transactions of the American Geophysical Union ( a weekly newsletter that can be found in most technical libraries).
Some cynical views are expressed here, but it does seem prudent to investigate what our current knowledge would actually predict for effects. One thing sure is that the solar wind is not powerful enough to carry off a significant amount of atmosphere during the short duration (on a geologic time scale) of a reversal. But there may be many other effects, including disturbances of the upper atmosphere, possibly the ozone layer.
To counterbalance the claims about Mars, it's important to note that Venus has no magnetic field at all, but has retained a very dense atmosphere. On the other hand there is almost no water present (left?) in the Venusian atmosphere.
It does take human effort (i.e. funding) to look at these things seriously rather than speculatively.
ThosEM
This whole magnetic field going away thing sounds like it could be very harmful to life on earth. Fortunately for us, Hollywood predicted this incipient crisis, and has come up with the solution.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The sun's magnetic poles switch every 11 years, which just happens to be current flipped. Flipped in last year in Feb.
b _1 .htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast15fe
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Hey, this is actually a plus. If less radiation bombardment from the sun is diverted by the weaker magnetic field, the atmosphere will become thinner and temperatures will go down (violently). No more global warming!
This is a sign of what is to come in the future - there will be magnetic pole shifts, earth axis will decline due to precession, weather changes, and to top all of this - the Sun will blow up in 4-5 billion years from now. So, shouldn't we start doing what is really important - just like in Ring World (Larry Niven) and Nemesis (Isaac Asimov), lets develop technology to move this planet around space, but we'll need really good working fusion power-plants to be constant source of energy and we'll need some sort of propulsion to move so much mass. Of-course Asimov's Nemesis shows that the best course of actions is to build huge space stations and move all folks up there, using the planets only as space anchors. These space stations will have to be able to survive any radiation, so they should be protected by artifficial magnetic fields. For now, let's just build a system of huge satellites around this planet that will serve as a radiation shield from the sun.
You can't handle the truth.
We have just seen on /. some story about academical rubbish in the field of Physics. Now we read another bigger rubbish about Earth's magnetic poles. Yes, "bigger" because a Big Bang hoax theory may be still "speculative" as Big Bang itself is still a Big Question. Now that Earth will boil or that migrating birds will get disoriented is pure bullshit as there are tons of facts to show its fallacy. Let me note a few:
The geological record shows lots of inversions occuring during Earth's History. But we are still alive don't we?
For those who studied Mars, well studied it, know that Martian Oceans didn't boil up in a very very old past. Whatever happened there, created a global and massive movement of the hydrosphere some billion years after Mars was formed. I don't see how a magnetic pole inversion would help creating 1km deep canyons in a matter of hours or days. It is very probable that this happened long after the Martian Magnetic Pole turned off.
If anyone cares to look at the Atlantic migrating birds, then he will note that some use both America and Africa to their travel North-South. Before Challenger's expedition (the ship, not the shuttle), people considered this as one of the evidences that these continents were much closer together in the past, as the zigzag pattern of migration turned into a nearly straight line.
Some birds may highly depend on the magnetic field to travel. But birds have been travelling around earth for a period much longer than most modern mammals (note: marsupials and placentarians are very recent additions to Earth's biota). Have we seen major extinctions of birds during Earth's magnetic flip-flops?
As far as I know, the Atlantic had plenty of water since Jurassic times. Challenger's expedition made several analysis of the magnetic properties of the bottom of the Atlantic. It showed a surface where the magnetic field changed direction sequently during the several millions of years, since Atlantic was formed.
There is a theory that claims that for some millions of years, Earth had no magnetic field - during the megafrost that happened between Archaic and Cambric. I don't know if this is correct but, if so, it seems that Life lived and passed well enough this terrible period.
Well, probably, any pole flip-flop may have its consequences on Earth and its inhabitants. But claiming it as the End of the World is the purest BS. This is Bad Science(TM) that many academics love to drop out over the masses. On one side they love to consider themselves as The Temple of Knowledge and save it from hoaxers, marginals, dissidents and heretics. On the other side they play no better than those clerics in Middle Ages, that at every sighting of a comet would cry over the crows "Armageddon! Armageddon is coming". Time to get more serious and sobber.
the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space...
This must be THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF SPACE!
Oh well, people believe anything. Will they flip? Hell if I know. Do I care? Not really. Scientists have a difficult predicting my weather for next week let alone an event that *should* have happened a 250k years ago and hasn't for a *million*. Right. Once you guys get my weather right, then come back and we'll talk.
kthx
And to think I did a report on this as a high school freshman.
;) Blah, blah blah, radiation, blah blah blah,cancer... :p
But seriously, I seem to remember you can use geological record to track this shift across the ocean floors, which implies, at least to me, that the field didn't nessisarily weaken. I seriously doubt we'll have a huge problem here. Sure, your compass is gonna get screwed the hell up and you'll be buying a new one every few years until they stabilize, but hey...
That said, how hard would it be to create a city sized magnetic field generator? Assuming on the off chance this guy is right and it will substantially weaken. Tie in a couple nuclear power plants an viole! (that's wa-la! in french
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What the hell are we going to do about it?
If there aren't any negative effects just watch and prepare for a nauseating ride. You'll be going down a highway south one day to your moms house and then voila you'll be going back north instantly without even realizing it.
It's going to be hard to fly a plane when south is north and north is south!!
THIS IS AN UNPARALLED CATASTROPHE
WE NEED MILLIONS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO RESEARCH I WILL DO IT MYSELF AS MY NORTH/SOUTH PHILOSOPHY IS VERY SOLID LIKE A NEUTRON STAR
-cx
What if one was to invent a compass that doesn't work, patent it, and then wait for the thousand or so years without a magnetic field...
During this period where no compasses would work, sue the crap out of all of the compass manufacturers for patent violation!
PROFIT!
"In many respects, a simpler culture is far more resilient than a complex one."
Change this to "In some respects, a simpler culture may be more resilient than a complex one" and I might agree.
Counterintuitive but true: Complex systems are harder to bring down than simple systems. Complex systems have more redundancy built in. If paths 1 through 10 are cut, you've got paths 11 through 5000 to use as alternates. If paths 1 through 7 are all you've got, you're out of luck.
Complex systems have more individual breakdowns than simple systems because they have more components to break. But, they are less likely to collapse than simple systems.
since it has to be something human beings are doing for anything annoying that happens to the earth, what activity are they going to blame for the pole flip?
this seriously stinks of hollywood making up news as a blockbuster is about to be released. they did it before with all those asteroid movies and then again with all those mars movies a few years ago.
from the article:
Paramount's latest sci-fi thriller, The Core - directed by Englishman Jon Amiel, and starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart - depicts a world beset by just such a polar reversal, with radiation sweeping the planet.
wtf??
i could live a little longer in this prison
Take a look at the early Industrial Revolution Cities in England. So overcrowded a plan was needed.
The solution : criminalisation of poverty. That way the poor could be killed or transported.
It was the industrial revolution, remember. People were brought into cities by enclosure of agricultural land and demand for labor from industry. Poverty did not increase, it was simply concentrated in the cities. There was no criminalization of poverty other than the workhouse. Transportation of convicts was largely to satisfy the demands of empire-building than to clean up England. There was no plan to deal with poverty; it wasn't really considered a problem. There were no people executed during the industrial revolution in England for the sole reason of poverty.
"So you see, Mr. Bigglesworth, I didn't want to destroy the entire frickin' world, but those Linux geeks really left me no choice. Reversing the earth's magnetic polarity was the only way it could be done without violating the DoJ consent agreement."
"Let's see...Start...Programs...World Control Devices...Disasters...Microsoft...where the hell..?"
"You seem to be trying to destroy the world. Would you like some help with that?"
"Clippy! Oh thank god. Begin 'Gates-Plan-B'. So long, Mr. Stallman. I hope there's a GNU version of 'Microsoft 1000-year Radiation Shield
*maniacal laughter*
How will this affect fridge magnets ?
how does this correlate with the various religions, and their predictions? people these days are always ranting about the "comming apocolypse", ect ect and the myan calander is set here to expire pretty soon.... in fact, alot of things end in the next few years. i'm not a "it's the end of the world!" type of person, but it seems like a hell of a coincidence. i can't imagine what would let people predict somthing like this, but if animals can "feel" an earthquake minutes before hand, a couple people over several thousand years might be able to "feel" the earth's magnetic field changing slooooowly.(and document it)
moox. for a new generation.
Anyone seeing the same crap that this came out of from? Like, "Save the pandas! Save the whales! Cure breast cancer. I AM CAPTAIN PLANET!"
I get tired of stuff like this. I just blow it off as more attempts to scare people into becoming a serious eco-maniac. Kinda like Dr. Aki Ross off of the Final Fantasy movie. "Save the gaia!"
Actually, the more you study this stuff the more you worry that some of the them could pose a real threat. Diseases are obvious, as are volcanoes when you realize we haven't had a decent eruption since the early 19th Century... but that even a Tambola-level eruption is nothing compared to a supervolcano like Yellowstone.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
a sustainable population will exist after almost any cosmic catastrophe the straight-to-dvd industry can dream up. The real question here, rather, is who will be privileged enough to be part of that sustained population.
It may come down to economics, where only those with access to a radiation shelter with replenishable food and untainted water will survive. Or, maybe some parts of the earth will be less exposed, giving benefit to those lucky enough to live in a cool spot (I think we know their government better be well armed).
But think of the possibility that a future humanoid race is descended entirely from either the US President and his Cabinet, evolving in underground bunkers for generations, or genetic mutants who have adapted to the harsh new atmosphere of the planet. What would comic book authors write about?
"You Global Warmer Nutties. I'll stick with our energy company President and his opinions, after all, he's been good so far. Where is the evidence that the world is warming up because of mankind!?! SHOW ME!"
"AIIIIEEEEE!!!" (SUDDENLY CRUSHED UNDER TONS OF RESEARCH PAPERWORK GETTING DROPPED DIRECTLY ON TOP OF HIM)
Will bird's magnetic navigation be messed up? If it is, it will prove that birds have an "internal compass, " and that it is magnetic
the core of the earth is much too hot to sustain magnetization of iron.
/huge/ amount of pressure, ~360 GPa (52,214,400 psi) at the surface of the inner core. even though iron would vaporize at core temperatures under normal pressure, at core pressures it can exist as a stable crystalline structure, epsilon-Fe, that can possibly support magentization. there's actually a theory that the entire inner core may be one giant crystal, but i don't know exactly how that would generate a field or be able to reverse at random.
well, the core of the earth is very hot, true, but it's also under a
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Is this gonna mess up the East and West Poles too?
I've got that silly book!!! Was a interesting read pre year 2k but it's not even funny in the misinformation sense, Author is Richard W.Noone.
Things Are The Way They Are
From Frazier's Bad Coriolis...
Is it possible to detect the Earth's rotation in a draining sink?
Yes, but it is very difficult. Because the Coriolis force is so small, one must go to extraordinary lengths to detect it. But, it has been done. You cannot use an ordinary sink for it lacks the requisite circular symmetry: its oval shape and off-center drain render any results suspect. Those who have succeeded used a smooth pan of about one meter in diameter with a very small hole in the center. A stopper (which could be removed from below so as to not introduce any spurious motion) blocked the hole while the pan was being filled with water. The water was then allowed to sit undisturbed for perhaps a week to let all of the motion die out which was introduced during filling. Then, the stopper was removed (from below). Because the hole was very small, the pan drained slowly indeed. This was necessary, because it takes hours before the tiny Coriolis force could develop sufficient deviation in the draining water for it to produce a circular flow. With these procedures, it was found that the rotation was always cyclonic.
Taken from www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html
put the what in the where?
Oh really. I'd like to meet your god. In my 22 years I've only seen proof that the universe can be compared to a big computer simulation in which there is only one outcome. Here's my side of the argument:
1. Everything that happens is based on how things were originally situated (at the big bang or however it started).
2. The thoughts in your head, including the god thing, are chemical reactions in a very small part of that system that happened to be in a certain state when the system started.
3. Time, which is why we only see part of this system instead of the whole thing at once, is a byproduct of inertia which is a byproduct of mass which is a byproduct of matter. Without matter the system would never change, thus making it impossible to measure time without a reference point (clock) outside the system.
4. Quantum theory, referring to a finite number of states in which a part of the system (such as an electron) can exist, can be taken as evidence that the system is actually a vast simulation. If there are a finite number of places and times in which matter can exist, then the system could be perfectly represented in a finite (although extremely large) amount of computer memory.
That's my point of view. Yes, I thought of #4 after conusming a large amount of Substances. Who else wants to feed the troll?
This has already been covered in DISCOVER Vol. 21 No. 10 (October 2000), among the others 19 ways the world could end:
http://www.ldolphin.org/twentyways.html
I thought Dirk Pitt saved us from this already?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The gas velocity is depedant on the Ideal gas law, here solved for velocity.
v = sqrt(3 R T / M )
where v is the velocity,
R the Ideal Gas constant, (0.08206 L atm / kg Kelven),
T the surface temperture in Kelvin,
and M the molar mass ( 2 * 16 for oxygen, 12 + 2*x16 = 44 for CO2 )
and the escape velocity is v = sqrt(2 Ga M/R)
where; Gc is Newton's constant ( 6.6715 E - 11,
M the mass of the Object,
R the surface velocity.
Basicaly, this means the larger (and cooler) an object is, the more atmosphere it can support.
Incidently, once an object gets an atmosphere, the surface temprature (sun side), is likely to be cooler, allowing more of an atmosphere to be supported.
Solving for Titan, and Mars are left as an exersize for the interested reader, Nine planets will give the remaining values needed
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --- Albert Einstein
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/othrdata/migrat io/orient.htm
Nuf said.
The shift in the magnetic fields is being artifically sped up by a secret operation by the united states government. They are forcing the shift through an artificial process being carried out in the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska. I do not know the technical details, but they are using some type of equipment to send waves into the core of the earth.
This is not some joke or troll post. Clearly you don't believe me, partially because I am posting as AC and for the fact that it sounds totally outrageous, and I clearly will be modded down. But I am posting this anyway so that history will show that someone did know about this while it was happenning.
I have to wonder what definition of "feasible" you're using that includes a project requiring "the present power output of all electrical plants on the planet over a decade" and more copper cable than has ever existed.
The conventional wisdom is that the actual reversal takes centuries, but some new evidence has geologists wondering if it can happen much more quickly, like weeks. We see old magnetic fields frozen in cooled lava, sometimes pointing north, sometimes south. In the last few years, while studying a ~10 million year old basalt flow in the Steens Mountain, Oregon, researchers think they have found a flow that solidified while a reversal was taking place. The bottom portion of the flow points one way, then the orientation gradually changes until the top (middle? -- last to cool) points the other way. We have a pretty good handle on how fast lava cools, and that whole event should only have lasted several weeks. Hard to believe but no one has come up with a great alternative explanation yet. So just may happen VERY quickly when it hits the tipping point. Yet another reason to ask for a GPS for Christmas!
A thatched roof is going to catch quite a few UV rays too. You're pretty much buggered either way on the whole "x-ray/gama-ray" end of things, but corrogated (SP?) aluminum isn't that hard to come by, even in some third world country. And I'd be suprised if there weren't some relatively common primitive building material that would work. Adobe maybe? You know, mud.
Fooz Meister
In previous occurrences of magnetic pole shifting, there likely would have been a very wide variety of species of animals and plants throughout the world. The populations of these species would be quite large too.
These days the footprint of six billion humans plus the space devoted to specialized species of grains and grazing animals means that there aren't as many animals and plants in the food chain. I always considered this the true danger from global warming since we are combining it with species extinctions and that could threaten food heirarchies around the world
A magnetic pole reversal might be more catastrophic than significant global warming. And there probably isn't anything we could do.
Humans could paradoxically always move into space...
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Our technology will have to undergo a severe shift.
I am surprised no one has commented on the fact that the magnetic fields around earth protect the Earth from radiation that _damages_ electronics. When the sun has a solar flare, satellites are knocked out by the radiation. The only reason computers on the planet aren't is because the magnetic fields deflect enough of the radiation to make it harmless to electronics.
Yet, if we don't have a magnetic field to deflect the radiation, we end up with a completely different problem. A solar flare will likely be able to take out a majority of our satellites at first (if they aren't shielded, which most aren't to the degree needed.) Then with no field at all, the electronics on the planet are threatened by the radiation.
Likely very little will happen to us (considering it's just EM radiation mostly, and not radioactive isotopes.) But, There will definitely be a shift in computer construction towards better shielded designs. (because if there isn't, then... well, there won't be any computers working at all.)
~ kjrose
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Environmentalists point out that the weakening magnetic field and atmospheric heating over the past 200 years coincide with, and is obviously caused by, an increase in evil industrialism. Protest marches are planned from New York south to Washington DC, then south to New York.
California legislators met in emergency session today and passed new automobile magnetic emission legislation. The magnetic fields of automobiles are now required to be aligned with the Earth's magnetic field and of opposite polarity so as to stress the existing magnetic generator to stay in the present configuration. Experts estimate it will only cost $200 per car and safety is worth the investment.
Australia celebrated for one hour, then began studying how to make use of their new domination of the highly successful Northern Hemisphere. Chinese leaders met to consider what to ignore next.
In medical news, herbal supplement manufacturers point out that natural iron supplements contain particles which experienced past natural reversals, and thus will train your body to help it deal with future changes.
Entertainers point out that they've been working for decades under hot, bright, lights and filming around the world until they don't know which way is up. This hasn't changed them in the least, and they're still just ordinary human beings like you or me, stated a spokesperson for Gardeners To The Stars, makers of fine gardening products just like the assistants to the gardeners of the Stars use but available at quality discount stores near you.
Tomorrow's weather forecast is for increasing temperatures to one-hundredth of a degree higher than yesterday. A gentle wind from the sunrise direction will change to stronger gusty winds from sunriseport, and chance of scattered thunderstorm shields in the area. As always, when a thunderstorm is within view with the sun behind it, take the kids outside to play in natural air and rain until the storm has passed and it is time to seal the house up again.
In sports news: The World Championship of Bowling in Cleveland today was won by a newcomer from Kenya for the third year in a row. He believes his country has produces so many winners because their bowling alley construction program placed them deeper than other countries did. Sources say that oxygen enrichment of some national bowling training facilities is widely rumored but not yet proven.
Our next update will be in three hours, when your sundial is a the midpoint. You should turn off your generator until then and set your laser receiver in standby mode.
This has been a Coherent News Network production, the fastest news ever bounced off the fluorescent sky.
"Some people worry that during magnetic reversals the Earth would receive a higher dosage of high-energy ions and electrons ("radiation" in common terms), which might affect us and any living creatures on Earth. This is not so. Even today, the magnetic shield is not effective near the magnetic poles, yet the radiation received there on the ground is only slightly higher than anywhere else. The reason is that our main shield against such particles is not the magnetic field of the Earth but the atmosphere, equivalent to some 10 feet of concrete." - nasa
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1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
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To be living in the Southern hemisphere. I just don't want to have to tip my world map upside down because it will be a lot harder to read that way....
They will experience a mild increase in radiation. I believe that they are already flying through the Van Allan Belts which give them a good dose each orbit. There are kept in the possition they are due to the magnetic field so they may even get less radiation then they normally do.
Geostationary satellites (the vast majority of communication satellites) are even farther out still and won't even notice.
The EM noise and damping caused by the sun's radiation hitting our magnetic field and atmosphere make communication to GEO *harder*. If neither were around we would have better communication (for course we wouldn't be around though).
1- Anoy everyone with running gags and/or in-jokes on /.
2- Ask for a hefty randsome to stop
3- Profit
(4- Get labeled a terrorist by Ashcroft and be thrown in jail)
Woo boy. I can't wait till management hears about this one. And here I thought all that last minute y2k preparation was bad... How many people are gonna be moving to the hills in anticipation of the all-out hell that will come when the swallows and wildebeests go nutty and try to take over the world.
Hmm... I wonder if the programmers from the 70s had enough foresight to incorporate some protection against poleshift and excessive radiation.... I can't wait till someone starts marketing tinfoil shell casemods and making bank. "No really! You really really need it! Save your data! Can withstand up to one boiled atmosphere!"
Isn't there a Doctor Who where the Cybermen flip the magnetic poles as a prelude to an invasion, complete with mind control and borg-like conversions?
I trust our greatest thinkers and leaders have already taken this into account.
"So, Bart was actually right, and not Lisa for once.."
That pissed me off, I was taking a physics test and that question was on there. For some reason I remembered that episode of the Simpsons, and answered accordingly citing the Simpsons as the reason for my answer.
I of course was wrong, but I cracked my teacher up (she is an anime freak so thats why I could cite them as evidance)
forget it.
In addition, many species of migrating animals and birds - from swallows to wildebeests - rely on innate abilities to track Earth's magnetic field. Their fates are impossible to gauge.
No! What about the migration of swallow carring coconuts?
--
Karma is overrated, whoring is ok.
In point of fact, what's being observed is that the magnetic field is declining in strength. It's an inferrence that it will reverse. There are contrary opinions, such as those that show that the energy being lost is not being stored in quadrapoles, octopoles, and so on.
/. are unwilling to consider reading this paper due to where it's published, but if you are willing to evaluate a paper by a PhD with many patents from working at Sandia Labs, try reading this paper. It shows how the magnetic field is declining and not storing this energy in the non-dipole moments.
I realize most readers of
Got Wisdom?
reconfigure our monitors! well, those of us with CRTs, that is. the magnetic field has an effect, and if it switches, so will we have to.
Many thousands of years of calling the pole at the north of the globe a north pole, and it has had enough, and migrating south, where it belongs.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
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Western industrialized countries are complaining that this is unfair, since most of the magnetic field produced from Human activity comes from the developing world, due to the wide spread use of crude coils and inefficient motors.
Advocates for the poor point out that developing countries need refrigeration to combat disease, and refrigerators require current with present day technology.
"We have no choice", says a spokesperson for the scientists. "We either cut way back on our use of electricity now, or doom our grandchildren to be roasted by the sun."
If I'd known I could've just said "I'm about to" to that age old question of "When are you going to take the trash out?" and mean 1,000 years, I'd have used it about 1,000 years ago!
Nice overrated comment you got there.
As usual. Some really dumb comment is ranked above all others in a non-comedy related thread where there is nothing to make fun of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
SUV. Fuck you asshole.
Consultant: It involved a near global catastrophy which occured aroung the 19th century. Only the speedy responce by excellent programmers saved civilisation.
I didn't know that. You'd have thought that they'd have learned from that and not let it happen again in the 20th century.
Suck figs.
I finally have a valid excuse for my hopelessly flawed sense of direction.
"of our descendants to bursting point, though such limitations do not worry film scriptwriters. Paramount's latest sci-fi thriller, The Core - directed by Englishman Jon Amiel, and starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart - depicts a world beset by just such a polar reversal, with radiation sweeping the planet.
:o)
The solution, according to the film, to be released next year, involves scientists drilling into Earth's mantle to set off a nuclear blast that will halt the reversal."
Wow, nukes again. Those puppies are *so* useful!
Stopping asteroids, stopping the earths magnetic field from shifting, what next? Save the world from impending ecological disaster by nuking antarctica? Will wonders never cease?
Everyone should have one!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Time now for some math.
Suppose a swallow is born 500 years from now. It's life span is what, 2-3 years? At the beginning of its life, the earth's magnetic strength is 0.5 as strong as it is today (500 years left/1000). By the end of the swallow's life it is 0.497 as strong (497 years left/1000), for a 0.6% change in magnetic field strength during the course of it's entire life. Less than one percent! Yeah, I think a swallow can deal with that.
If you are born with something (sound, energy, happiness, whatever) that is weaker than it was 1000 years ago, you do not even notice. It's that way all your life, and you cope with it. You never even consider it.
Definition of Science: The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study. === Perhaps you don't remember the story of the "natural phenomena" that was at the heart of the Blair Witch - that there was a supposed witch who had certain powers (such as the ability to float above the ground). Perhaps you don't remember the fact that the students were exploring to STUDY this phenomena. Perhaps you don't remember that the hype was leaked as if it was a REAL story on the internet, prior to the movie being released. Perhaps you don't realize that HUMANS are part of NATURE, and therefore the study of HUMANS (even those who are supposed witches) is a science. Perhaps you are a moron.
reality
Buy some corning stock.
\reality
Cool. Northern lights on the beach. Gimme another beer.
Wrong.
This was the premise of a book titled Decipher. Well, one of the premises. Check it out at Amazon
This is the same author who wrote the screenplay of 51st State / Formula 51 (depending on where you live)
economy would crash in 72-96 hours. It is NOT POSSIBLE to continue our monetary and banking system as it stands now without computers. In reality more than 50% of the money in the banks is electronic numbers and does not exist in reality. If the computers really went POOF, that money would go POOF as well. How quickly do you think our infrastucture would fail ? How fast do you think we could switch back to a localized barter system ? How would we ship food ? Billions would die, as the medical system crumbled. Cities would become death traps. Do you really think everyone went nuts over Y2K because nothing could actually happen. It turned out to be a non-event, but the samepotential exists again :(
You may send me to my room if you like.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
supposed witch who had certain powers (such as the ability to float above the ground)
Got equations?
Thought not.
Face it, the original poster blew it by equating science with The Blair Witch. Hype, sure. But not science. The movies about tall building burning, asteroids hitting the planet, airplanes crashing have more science than 'its an alledged witch'.
Huh? Are you saying that the study of earth's mysteries and phenomena are not science? Are you implying that investigating the unknown is not science? Are you saying that you need "equations" to prove a hypothesis, which is what the kids in Blair Witch set out to do? Nice try, but equations aren't required for science, and equations don't necessarily mean science. For instance, you = moron. But that's not science. that's obvious.
Guess it's time to burn my orienteering merit badge.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Seriously, on a sheer magnitude scale, which has greater potential to change global climate patterns? Human CO2 production or a significant change in solar radiation? (Not to mention changes in seismic activity resulting from the same fluctuations in the earth's molten core..) The earth is not exactly a stable system.
those BASTARDS!!!!!
Here are some interesting tidbits about the earth's field:
:)
* looks like it takes about 1-5 thousand years to flip.
* The current field is still twice as large as the best estimate of the average field (for the last 300 million years)
* We had an "excursion" 40 thousand years ago where the field went close to 0. It's name the "Laschamp event" after where it was first found.
* We aren't really "due" for another reversal anytime soon. The field flipping is a highly random process. There is a period in the Cretaceous were the field didn't flip for (errr I forget the exact time) some 60 million years.
* We had better start drilling that hole in the earth to put the nuke down into the >>> mantle to stop the core for going kooky.
* We never landed on the moon
-k
A spokesperson for the strong nuclear force confirmed today that the elemental constant was also considering a 'flip.' Consequences to industrialialized nations due to climate changes and possible universe-wide subatomic disruption will 'require further study.'
Gravity denied any connections to the magnetic, strong, or weak forces.
So my question is, what is Santa going to do if the north pole moves?
-- $G
you = moron.
When you can provide links to actual science magazines or engineering reports supporting the existance or the dangers of a witch, please do.
Oh, wait. You are not grounded in reality.
I'm not so sure about this, but I have been told that some animals can sense the Earth's magnetic field. Birds for example that migrate for the winter and fly long distances to other continents navigate using some king of 'built-in' compass. They kind of have a sixth sense, which enables them to 'feel' the north/south -polarities, which is very useful for navigation when flying high up in the sky.
If the Earth's magnetic polarities would switch, how would wildlife that have this sense react? Is the polarity change so slow that an evolution/adaptation could be seen, or would some spieces be functionally impaired or even existentially threatened?
Only the poles flip. The Earth will still rotate in the direction it does now, so East (defined as "the direction in which a planet rotates") and West ("the other way") will remain the same.
Animals that think of east as "face north then turn right" are screwed, people that think of east "where the sun rises" are okay.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
to spot the set-up for a joke in that comment?
For anyone who wants to read about the people who found out about the magnetic pole shift and its geological implications, namely a possible new ice age. A little quote:
"As World In Peril traces the unit's work in terrestrial magnetism, the significance of their findings becomes increasingly apparent. In 1947, Lieutenant Frank O. Klein pinpointed the magnetic North Pole 165 miles closer to the geographic North Pole than previously predicted, and the unit's results sparked a scientific investigation into the ramifications of the data. That investigation raised the question of what would happen if and when the magnetic pole converged on the geographic pole. The two had been moving ever closer, and the 46th Reconnaissance Squadron's research indicated that the gap was closing more rapidly than anticipated. Geophysicists analyzed the data, and a startling new hypothesis was formed."
find it here
As long as you feel comforted, the truth doesn't matter.
You forgot Kurzweil's third law of nuclear dynamics:
A nucleotide in a peptide chain is prevented from traversing any formation wherein the principle dynamic flux is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than epsilon-Fe and the summary flux density exceeds 1.297 E^12 or when the moon is full and owls are in flight.
I've got another currently feasible experiment that could provide enough power for this, that could likely be implemented over the course of the next 20 years if anyone wanted to do it.
But it's long so if you want to talk about it email me because this thread will probably drop off the map soon. =)
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years.
In other news, the sun may implode on itself and create a red giant over the next 25 million years (estimates may vary)...
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
This bit from the story:
makes it seem like an advertisement more than a real story.
no!!! now we'll all fail our physics exams...
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
Could this be the biggest communications disruption other than a good old fashioned slashdotting? Forget beowulf Clustering!
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Any chance of this happening before my end of year exams? Life: A sexually transmitted terminal disease.
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a reference to Godwin's Law approaches 1
Along the same lines... what about computers? HDDs are just huge magnets, and most of the other parts are magnetically charged. I'm not sure how dependent these things are on the Earth's magnetic field, but what would happen? Same question for tapes, and anything else magnetic.
[insert witty comment here]
Wow, impressive graph. I particularly like the way they avoid starting from zero so as to mislead the reader. Maybe we could get them to do a study showing Linux growth rates, Microsoft would be wiped off the chart!
The pole-flip is all in reference to Nibiru's descent towards earth, which is estimated to be 12/13/2013. Keep your eyes open for earthquakes.....
:: It' not a prion if you never try the door
Don't you see, this is a great reason to use Micro$oft Windows. By the time the field changes or disappears, users will be so used to intermittent failures that all we will need to do is add a new STOP error:
STOP ERROR 0x000007D0 (0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
SOLAR_FLARE_VIOLATION
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Hey!
;-)
What's with this "setting of some nukes will solve everyting" mentality in the US anyway?
Giant block of stone tumbling towards earth!
Solution: Let's nuke it!!!
Oh no! The poles are reversing!
Solution: Let's nuke the core!!!
The russians are being communistic!
Solution: Let's point nukes at'em!!!
The japanese won't give up!
Solution: Let's nuke'em!!!
Give up with the nuke fetishism already!
(By the way... Hint to people who hasn't got a shred of humor: This post is supposed to be modded "funny"
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure one of my lecturers explained once that if the core was supposed to be a bar magnet, it's power at the climax would be so incredibly huge that the globe itself would begin to deform. Can anybody confirm or deny this?
I think this is the greatest indication that the original story is just meant to sell a movie plot. "Just" two millennia? Yeah, time to start panicing about the destruction of our GPS satallites (which of course, we probably won't even be using 100 years from now).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
My 20 year stash of National Geographic magazines will become worthless - all the maps will be upside down!
I haven't seen a single comment about it in this discussion. (Then again, I have a short attention span.)
Maybe it was there to save our bacon all along.
I blame everybody that helped avoid a Y2K crash (myself included) for the current state of the economy. If we geeks had had the foresight not to fix things to well the economy would still be buzzing. We should have fixed the stuff that could kill people and then left the rest broken. ;) We need to think of some other bug we can induce fear about so as to boost our own pay rate again. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Possibly the shift would create magnetic bursts that'd wipe hardrives clean forcing everyone to upgrade to Windows Armageddon. Things are okay. The world may be dying but Bill Gates stock portfolio looks great.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
in your calculations you forgot to include that massive amounts of signs proclaiming "magnetic field generator buried here. call before you dig!" so that morons dont dig it up.
actually, with that kind of power running thru it, they would probably do the cool 'hair standing on end and visible skeleton' thing from the cartoons when they touch power lines, so it might be good for a laugh BEFORE WE ALL DIE FROM NO MAGNETIC FIELD. IM NOT NORMALLY A PRAYING MAN, BUT IF YOU ARE UP THERE AND CAN HEAR ME, PLEASE, HELP US, SUPERMAN!!!
...at the lack of scientific knowledge here on /.
Mars and Venus actually share an important feature -- they've both lost most of their hydrogen. Thus, there's no water on Venus and very little atmosphere at all on Mars.
When there is little protection from Solar winds, molecules in the atmosphere are dissociated into ions. The hydrogen then gets its temperature raised and some of the hydrogen leaks out into space never to return to the gravity well.
Now, I'm not saying that the Earth's atmosphere will all boil off during a magnetic field reversal, but the effects on the ground and to the atmosphere would be profound.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Our functions may be complex, but are our poles simple?
so, like, when the pole thingys flip, will the water go down the other way when i flush? ;)
nobody has the slightest idea how it happens, why it happens, and what happens when it actually happens, we only know that at regular intervals, the magentic polarity switches, as it is clearly evidenced by the spreading ocean floor (see plate tectonics). Yes, there is no clear evidence in the fossil record that suggetss anything nasty happens, not even increased levels of radiation - has anyone done any pore fluid anaylysis to check this?
Of course, an alternative theory has it all in God's hands, and wherever you lay your faith, a true scientist will never restrict his vision with theories alone, however good, it's all commonly accepted, but not actually known - like the old flat earth model!
And before the flames start, I am a firm believer in both the theories of evolution and plate tectonics!
Now I'm gonna have to learn my compass backwards. Now South will be white and north will be black... or is it other way around... ummm... oops
Smeghead every day of the week.
Yeah right... Go smoke a few more, Ruth. :)
Actually, is she dead yet? She looked pretty old when I read one of her books that I checked out of the library because it was in the UFO section. WTF? UFOs? I guess there isn't a "new-age drugs working on a 60+ year-old mind" section in the Dewey decimal system. :)
In enemy territory or over the open ocean, you won't find radar beacons.
Gyros tend to drift as you fly over long distances, and need to be compared to a magnetic compass or other reference.
Ken Kesey's 1992 novel "Sailor Song" describes this event. Worth a read. ISBN: 0140139974
that Australia with change from Down Under to Up There?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by. (Robert Frost, 1916)
Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate.
Well then, that explains the geese I saw the other day, all pissed off and standing around the one I figure was leading the flock. He was hissing and kicking his garmon gps around in the dirt.
Whew! Thought I was losing my mind for a second. They usually make good products.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
A man walked into his Doctor's office today wearing nothing but a pair of shorts made out of cling-wrap. His Doctor looked at him and exclaimed: "I can clearly see you're nuts".
This type of behaviour illustrates what we might see happen when we are all affected by the global magnetic shift episode.
I'm Kent Brockman.
ok, i'm not an expert on the subject, but after talking with my geology prof, he laughed at the article. first of all, the switches happen every 400k years or so, the last switch was about 400k years ago, yes we as humans know how long it takes, i won't go into details here, but it's pretty simple science... second, the switch takes aprox 1k years to occur, the magnetic field DOES NOT dissapear, the pole slowly moves from the north to the south, it is a very gradual thing, quick in geologic time, but we as humans wouldn't notice the movement or the switch without our advanced measurment and data collecting technologies that we have.
my take on the article is that it must be by the same guy who wrote the article saying an asteroid was going to hit earth and riled everyone up, when in fact, it would miss by quite a large margin.
yay for poor grammar, spelling and punctuation.
errr... the 19th century? dude, you need to take that tin-foil hat off now
Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will! - Antonio Gramsci.
An African or a European swallow?
dd
Right now Earth's magnetic North Pole is located at the geographic South Pole (precisely close to it) and magnetic South Pole is located at geographic North Pole. So the flip will just fix the bug.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Terms like "vaxen" and "boxen" are gayen.
Actually, the consutants I know are not too hot on their history... :-)
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
Don't submarines use inertial guidance also?
re: disruption of electronics and satellite crippling
the story did mention this.
and the solar flaring you mention would have to occur at the most incredibly opportune second as the broiling radiation furnace our upper atmosphere will become will begin vaporising those satellites straight away. however they'd already have begun to die from the bombardment they were not designed to handle.
and I have to disagree re: us -- very many things could happen to us. not the least of which would be radiation poisoning/extremely accelerated cancer rates (our solar defenses in our atmosphere will be among the first to go) and possibly the steady loss of our atmosphere altogether (and associated steady heat related deaths) which would most certainly kill us.
(my sig is not directed at you)
- I am made of meat.
Seriously. People have been fucking shit up on a global scale with funky wave devices since the 19th century. Do a Google search on Tesla. They say that huge-ass blast in Siberia that was the biggest explosion ever recorded (although few people here know about it methinks) was not a meteor as some claim, but one of Tesla's experiments. Also, I heard from a friend that Tesla claimed that there was a frequency that would destroy the earth. Sounds like utter bs, but really, EVERYTHING, including the earth has a specific frequency. If you generate the same frequency and in phase, you absolutely will cause an increase in the amplitude of the conductive medium's oscillations until it becomes unstable and shatters. You can argue the history or what's going on currently. Frankly, we don't know if any of that was ever true or not. What we DO know is what's possible with our existing knowledge of science!
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
dammit! now what am i going to do with all those halfprice bulk compasses?? /me loads up ebay..
someone must wants them, surely??
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
...and this project would make Hiroshima pale by comparison.
I would urge all Americans who think they live in a free society to question what is happening in secret in their own country.
Once fully in operation, HAARP will enable the miltary establishment to manipulate Global weather, control international comms. and surveillance, affect human personality.
For more information on this read "Atlantis Rising" by Pat Cori (www.iuniverse.com).
Even the top military brass are being used as stooges for whoever is really pulling the strings.
There is a great danger that they will end up blowing half of Alaska with this.
This project needs to be stopped before it gets out of hand and possibly destroys the Earth.
If I recall right there were a Fantastic Four magazine where aliens where trying to revert our magnetic poles because it interfered with their computers (they have arrived here thousands of years ago when the and where in statsis until recently and in that time the magnetic core were reversed). Im not sure but their trials caused havoc through machines around the planet. Reed Richards simply changed some small things on their ship and solved their problem, making their technology able to operate in the current magnetic conditions.
Here in Nottingham if you stole more then the value of a loaf of bread you were hung on the courthouse steps (the fittings for the gallows are still there).
Less than that and you were transported.
The courthouse is a museum now.
Admittedly the law wasn't created to specifically deal with the poor but their lives were held in contempt. TBH if you survived the journey and lived out your sentence you probably ended up better off than back in Nottingham but still, not everyone did.
Whatever you want to call it, it was akin to genocide / slavery and it's a great injustice to those unfortunates and their antipodean descendents to be branded as criminals rather than victims.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I'm just heartened that a lot of the heavy-duty intercontinental communication is done by fiberoptic. Why don't we start looking more seriously at alternate forms of computing? We've known for decades now that magnetic devices can be unreliable, but there doesn't seem to be a push to change gears.
:P
There are up-and-coming technologies that could be feasible--check out http://www.media.mit.edu/research (MIT Media labs.)
Also, if this is going to be an extremely gradual change, the switchover will be less painful. But has anyone actually tried our standard magnetic-based equipment under an environment equivalent to the one after the pole switch? Or the possible environments *during* the switch? I imagine it'd be like moving a huge magnet over an entire room and seeing if hard drives still work.
And how would one make this seem relevant to the general public? The Y2K fix was so behind-the-scenes that ENTIRELY TOO MANY people dismissed it as hype, when in fact programmers, engineers, IT people worked countless hours to make the transition as smooth as it was. How could one convince the general public that they need different forms of computers in EVERYTHING, from their wristwatches to their air traffic control centers?
I'm just throwing out stuff, here. *shrug*
Angry IT woman in big clompy boots. And talking lint!.
A large group of Polish folk, with a lot of iron in their diet, were seen doing headstands.
Scientists were not sure what was causing this.
They were heard chanting:"We want to be Down-under, where women glow and men chunder!
Do you hear, do you hear the thunder?"
Members of the Australian '70-80s Rock-group "Men at work" were unavailable for comment.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
African or European swallows?
If I recall my biology/evolution classes in High School, humanoid forms ( ie, that ape before us... ) exist for some, what, 3 million years? Follow me:
250.000 yrs - 1 magnetic flip
so 4 flips in a million years, or 12 flips while "we" were standing here.
I suppose humans ( or apes or any other mamal for that matter ) at that time could not live without minimal O2 and other atmospherical components such as those we have today. So it can't have been that bad. Why should just THIS next one be the Magnetic Flip of Doomsday(tm) ?
Bring it down.
Whoo Whoo !!! We can all move to Utah and burrow into the limestone and make under ground houses..
And take on multiple wives as its still legal there!!!
from your tv.
Focused mind control rays work so very much
quicker than the low power base rays that
are beamed out of your tv set.
Blue.
... Red!
NO NO NO
mountvol \\?\brain{dbe069b1-65ae-11d5-bab4-806d6172696f}\h
If the magnetic field weaker, the "funneling" effect is also weaker, and less ozone is created, and "holes" form.
Or I could be on crack. Seems too sensible.
Interesting how the timetables seem to coincide nicly, too.
If our survival ( ability to run SUV's and talk on microscopic phones we can never find in our SUV's ) was at stake we could put an enourmous amount of time and resources into a project that would save us. All the people would contribute whatever would be necessary. We would achieve greatness, develop all the technology needed, forge a new and greater future for all. At least until the IPO that is. Then a few people get rich and survive in luxury while the rest of us die like the poor $$$ fodder we are.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
One concern is the effect on satelites that use interaction w/ the earths magnetic field to adjuster their orientation. A lack of a magnetic field will mean that fuel must be used for orientation instead, thus decreasing their life span.
"Captain planet, he's our hero..."
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.