Ship Logs Suggest Upcoming Polar Reversal

Nyerp writes "Researchers are using naval logs dating back as far as 1590 to arrive at better estimates of the decline of Earth's magnetic field. The results suggest that there may be a reversal of earth's magnetic field in about 2000 years." Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!

Comments

Global Warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Retroactive due to Global Warming, I bet!

Re:Global Warming?

[Poltras]

And how is that reverse of the current situation?

Re:Global Warming?

[foniksonik]

Hmmm I like your vision of the future... so it will only take 2000 years for this to come about?

In the Year 4006:

- Linux is the new Retro Fashion of the day
- Everyone uses Macs
- Windows is just another entry in the history books

My sig is truly a prophesy!!!!!! ( the guy who wrote it was a prophet, hmm wish I remembered his /. id )

Re:Global Warming?

[Jedi Alec]

Nah, this is just God's way of telling us to bring back Star Trek. Oh noes, something's broken, reverse the polarity!

Re:Global Warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, lets just blame George W. Bush for it. This is an environmental condition, so it _has_ to be his fault.

Re:Global Warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so totally not new news - I watched a Documentary on this a FEW YEARS AGO on National Geographics or similar.

Seriously, I know most movies are fakes, but where do you think most of the natural disaster doomsday type movies come from?! Remember the Movie 'CORE'?!? what do you think the inspiration was for that?

Re:Global Warming?

[ToasterofDOOM]

OOH, I know!!! Ragnarok!

Re:Global Warming?

[bobbie4]

Hey, I know what Ragnarok is!
It's Captain Steiner's sword from FFIX, right?
So Captain Steiner is responsible for pole reversal?

Re:Global Warming?

[pAnkRat]

No,
Ragnarok is a Disco/Church in the game Max Payne (part one).

Re:Global Warming?

[zippthorne]

Well the inspiration appears to be a misunderstanding of how planetary magnetism works(1), a misconception about the effects of magnetism on electromagnetic radiation(2), a misunderstanding about angular momentum(3), a misunderstanding of geometry(4), a complete failure to learn the second law of thermodynamics(5), some fanciful thinking about nuclear physics(6), and plenty more misconceptions, fabrications, and failures to think critically.

1: it is not generated by the rotation of the core. The core has a net charge of zero, so solutions to maxwell's equations on the problem of a charged spinning sphere are invalid. They also fail to accurately predict the shape of the earth's magnetic field and its periodic reversal. The prevalent theory that I am aware of is that it has something to do with convection, which also explains some processes in the outer layers of the sun.

2: a magnetic field does not affect electromagnetic radiation in any way. All of the radiation that we recieve from the sun (including that which happens to be in microwave bands) already comes in with all the energy it would. The thing that protects us from this is the atmosphere, which you'll not is largely transparent over the portion of the sun's spectrum which contains the most energy. We don't need all that much protection.
      It only affects charged particles, and what it does to them isn't much help to us anyway. It traps them, and directs them toward the poles. hence: the aurora. If anyone was to be affected by this it would be people living at northern latitudes. Without the field, fewer particles would be trapped, and would be spread out evenly over all latitudes. So instead of Canada hogging all the cool northern lights, we'd be treated to a weak earth-wide auroral display. Oh and the thing that protects from the actual charged particles is the same thing that protects us from the radiation. The atmosphere. In fact, that's what the aurora is.

3: angular momentum has nothing to do with turblence. It takes energy to change it, and the momentum of a spinning sphere of iron "the size of mars" would take far more energy to change than could be achieved with any satelite launched by man. Unless we could launch things of the order of the MOON. Even so, angular momentum is conserved, so reducing the momentum of the core would require something else to gain that momentum. It is not like a hurricane: the butterfly effect has nothing to do with it.

4: the ship had rotating decks so they'd be level regardless of the ship's orientation. This was about the only thing that made any sense in the film, but they ignored IT as well. When the ship was pointing straight down, they were still able to move from car to car as if the decks hadn't rotated at all.
4a: they also missed an opportunity to show an interestig physical effect: as you get closer to the center of the earth, force due to gravity decreases. At the depth the terranauts were, they should have been able to bounce around the cabin.

5: Entropy in closed system increases for all real processes. You can't just take energy from heat and have the heat disappear. And you can't just solder a wire to the hull randomly and power the damn ship from your magical entropy decreasing hull. And even if you could, why wasn't that the original PRIMARY power system?

6: You can't make a fusion bomb 50% more powerful by adding plutonium. The fusion part already increased the yield of a fission bomb by orders of magnitude. why would a little extra fissioning.. NEARBY.. do any good whatsoever?

So, the kernel of truth to the film "The Core" appears to be, "The earth has a magnetic field."

Re:Global Warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have a very small penis.

Re:Global Warming?

[ToasterofDOOM]

Actually It's the end of the world in norse mythology, and that's where the game got the name from. Good game, though.

Duh.

[TubeSteak]

This one's a no-brainer guys.

Just turn your compass around 180 degrees, then it'll be pointing South instead of North.

Re:Duh.

[nsayer]

Yes, except that's what you tell your descendents, a few generations after the compass becomes useless.

While the flips may occur quickly on a geological timeframe, they take much longer than a human lifetime to occur and stabilize.

A compass is a handy thing to have at sea, since without landmarks its the easiest way to keep pointing in the same direction. But there are other ways to navigate - with and without technology. We (or rather, "they," since we'll long be dust) will just have to make do with them.

Re:Duh.

[scooter.higher]

Uh, no.

I will have to respectfully disagree with you. Once the poles switch, the needle will have reversed direction 180 degrees eliminating the need to do anything to the compasss you are holding. The colored end of the needle with now be pointing south instead of north (or as applicable to your compass).

If you turn your compass 180 degrees you'll be going in the wrong direction.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Researchers are using naval logs

January 15th, 1876
Cpt. S. Wholle
 
Due to neglectancy, my navel is now of a black-reddish color and emits
an utterly foul odeur. I do not know as of yet how this may affect our
mission.

Re:Duh.

[TubeSteak]

A compass is a handy thing to have at sea, since without landmarks its the easiest way to keep pointing in the same direction. But there are other ways to navigate - with and without technology.

Like GPS (or the Euro version Galileo) and stars?

While I doubt mariners will ever stop being taught compass and celestial navigation (tradition is important), I can't imagine either will be needed 100 years from now, much less a thousand.

Unless those statellites fall out of the sky, GPS is here to stay.

Re:Duh.

[rbochan]

"I must go down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tallship,
and a star to sail her by,..."
      --John Masefield

There were sucessful sailors long before there were compasses...
And there's always those new fangled gps thingies.

Re:Duh.

[jacksonj04]

Nope. Assuming poles had switched and you lined your compass up with the North it indicated, it would be a full 180 out. Hence rotate 180 to have the correct orientation again.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to pack away your old compasses with north/south bckwards, they'll be a novelty item some day.

Re:Duh.

[shawb]

I'd say just line up with the other side of the magnet.

Re:Duh.

[nsayer]

Like GPS (or the Euro version Galileo) and stars?

No. Neither of those will tell you which way you're pointing. Both of those tell you where you are (actually, the cellestial version will only tell you where you are with the aid of an accurate clock).

Not quite the same thing.

On land, it's easy to walk in a straight line. You pick a tree or a rock or a mountain, walk towards it, then check your GPS gizmo and it will tell you which direction you walked. But while you're walking, you simply walk in the direction of the landmark you've chosen.

At sea, this is impossible. You can't just steer towards a landmark, because there are none. The best you can do is steer towards a particular star (the sun counts), but you'll probably have to make corrections for its motion. A compass serves the same purpose as a distant tree or mountain on land -- keeps you pointing in the same direction over the course of the present to near future. You need to be able to do that reliably before position fixes can help get you where you want to be.

Position references can be finessed into giving you a bearing track, but that's like telling a day trader that because the stock went up yesterday it's going to go up again tomorrow - maybe, but maybe not. You need more data to be sure.

Re:Duh.

[nsayer]

And there's always those new fangled gps thingies.

See my other reply. GPS won't tell you which way you're pointing, only where you are.

Re:Duh.

[Bloke down the pub]

I'd say just line up with the other side of the magnet.

If by "side" you mean "end", I'd agree; just treat the red end (or whichever was North before) as South. If you rotated the compass as some suggest, you'd be transposing East and West.

Re:Duh.

[stfvon007]

Compasses would still work during the actual flip. There will still be a residual magnetic field while the flip is happening (but only about 10% as strong it is today)it would only be when the new reversed magnetic firld strengthens to the point to eaqual the residual field that compasses will not work,however this period of time will be much shorter than the switch itself as the reverse field would continue to strengthen. (your looking at about 10-20 years with the total magnetic field at 1% of todays if it strenthens at the same rate it is decaying today)

Re:Duh.

[Mostly a lurker]

Like GPS (or the Euro version Galileo) and stars?

No. Neither of those will tell you which way you're pointing. Both of those tell you where you are (actually, the cellestial version will only tell you where you are with the aid of an accurate clock).

The stars, with even a rudimentary timepiece, are sufficient to provide a good guide to general direction. Before compasses ever existed, navigation was done based on them.

As for GPS (the most accurate versions) two appliances at opposite ends of a vessel together with suitable calculations would give you the orientation of the vessel. (I have no idea if this is ever done.)

Re:Duh.

[ColaMan]

Both of those tell you where you are (actually, the cellestial version will only tell you where you are with the aid of an accurate clock).

Polar, or circumpolar stars can tell you the direction of the pole, and from there you can infer your approximate heading fairly easily.

Polaris (in the northern hemisphere) and a small trick using the southern cross and pointers in the southern hemisphere do the job ok.

Re:Duh.

[Rigrig]

Just take two GPS gizmos some distance from each other and you can work out which way you're pointing.
You might be off by a few degrees because of GPS inaccuracy, but we'll probably develop better positioning gizmos before compasses stop pointing north.

Re:Duh.

[Nataku564]

2 GPS locators will give you which way you are pointing.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

My GPS tells me very nicely which way I'm headed and the direction is calculated entirely from GPS data (no hidden compass). Of course if you're not moving it won't tell you which way you are pointed. However, if you're not moving, it doesn't really matter. Throw in a handful of cheap accelerometers and you could get pretty good indication of direction even when stopped. It's not really rocket science.

Re:Duh.

[ceoyoyo]

Kinda handy if your batteries go dead or you drop your GPS.

Ask any pilot or sailor if they'd fly or leave sight of land with only GPS. You always have a compass, and should be able to at least find the north star if THAT breaks.

Re:Duh.

[mattyrobinson69]

2 gps devices, one at the front, one at the back, and a computer system comparing them and telling you which way your pointing

Re:Duh.

[alnjmshntr]

Couldn't you just follow the GPS to your destination?

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

GPS can, and is, used for attitude determination. You dont need multiple receivers, but rather multiple antennae feeding into a single receiver. The antennae do not have to be spaced far apart, baselines of .5 m have been shown to give good results. The attitude algorithms utilize carrier phase differencing to determine a roll-pitch-yaw measurement down to an accuracy of fractions of a degree.

Re:Duh.

[dracken]

Anyone heard of the Gyrocompass ? Magnetic compasses are not used in ships and planes. Most of them rely on gyroscopes.

Re:Duh.

[shlong]

As for GPS (the most accurate versions) two appliances at opposite ends of a vessel together with suitable calculations would give you the orientation of the vessel. (I have no idea if this is ever done.)

This is done with gyroscopes at each end of the ship. Inertial navigation is fantastically precise, though it does suffer from slow drift which need periodic corrections.

Re:Duh.

[jofer]

"As for GPS (the most accurate versions) two appliances at opposite ends of a vessel together with suitable calculations would give you the orientation of the vessel. (I have no idea if this is ever done.)"

This is indeed done. In fact, research vessels often have at least 4 GPS recievers--one at each corner of the ship--to give real-time information on not only the direction of the vessel, but its attitude in three dimensions, as well. This is needed to correct data gathered by various instrumentation (i.e. multi-beam bathymetry, etc.) I haven't seen it, as I haven't actually been on any research cruises yet, but I'm told it's quite cool to see a real-time display of the ship's orientation as you feel it roll beneath you!

Re:Duh.

[MichaelSmith]

As for GPS (the most accurate versions) two appliances at opposite ends of a vessel together with suitable calculations would give you the orientation of the vessel. (I have no idea if this is ever done.)

My GPS will show the direction of north, provided that I am changing my position at the time. If I stop and turn, north is wrong.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how you explain that GPS can't be used for navigation, inspite of the fact that every aircraft and ship over a certain size does exactly that. It's far more accurate then navigating by compass or intertial. Sure, only a fool flys without a working compass, but GPS navigation is not hard.

Re:Duh.

[nwbvt]

"No. Neither of those will tell you which way you're pointing. Both of those tell you where you are (actually, the cellestial version will only tell you where you are with the aid of an accurate clock)."

Seriously, do you think they call it the "North Star" because it tells you if you north of something? GPS devices may or may not tell you which direction you are pointing (its possible they can by keying off of the direction to the satellite, but I don't own such a device so I can't tell for sure), but I can assure you that our ancestors have used the stars to tell which way is North, South, East, and West for years. Hell I do it all the time when I'm driving and I don't know where I am. If it is in the evening (I don't need the exact time, just a general idea will work), the direction of the sun is West. If it is in the morning, the direction of the sun is East. Midday is a bit harder, but since I am north of the equator, the sun will be slightly South of me.

Re:Duh.

[topham]

Thats why the parent said 2 GPS Units, one fore, one aft. the average position of each will give a good estimate of the direction a ship is facing. Moving, or not.

Re:Duh.

[andreyw]

GPS and Gallileo aren't the only systems. The Russian GLONASS (global navigation satellite system) system will be fully opened up commercially starting in 2007.

Re:Duh.

[hitmark]

there is a reason why one of the stars are called the north star. if you can pick that one out, you have north. last time i checked its of the tail of big bear ;)

another options is the sun and some observasions. recent discoverys have shown that vikings used a kind of sun "clock" to navigate. basicly a round disc with a peg in the center, and a arch drawn over the disc.

here is a article that talks about how it works at the end:
http://www.griffithobs.org/IPS%20Planetarian/IPSVi king.html

Re:Duh.

[kesuki]

but his point was that 1 single gps reciever + i CPU capable of performing a caluclation based on the past 10 stored gps data entries (for example) can give you about a 99% accurate bearing As long as you're moving. ships, even when adrift with no engines Are Always Moving. It's true that for scientific accuracy 2-4 GPs recievers are required (4 will provide more data points and more readouts of say pitch and yaw data) but for a 'cheap' solution that can be outfitted on even the poorest shrimp fishermans boat a single gps solution should be affordable in 2000 years, assuming humanity has survived the global energy wars*.

*= because if humanity continues to rely on non-renewable, non fusion/fission based power sources there really is only about a handful of generations worth of 'energy growth' before resource shortages result in a bloody war for Who can live in a 'modern' civilized manner vs the poor masses forced to survive on animanl and human labor. and that's just assuming we manage to switch from oil dependancy to FNGs/coaltar/coal etc dependancies. most likely, we Will choose to switch to say, an improved design sodium cooled fission reactor (which would produce no radioactive waste prior to decommissioning, as it's uranium rods would never deplete before the overhaul life cycle of the reactor) or have reliable fission reactors... before the energy source options left to replace our post peak liquid oil reserves are fully depleted. at least, in civilized nations the solutions to the problem will be realized. like canada. who is now the number one exporter of petrolium products to the US because of their ENORMOUS coaltar reserves.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

But at sea there are winds and currents that affect your course, so the direction you're pointing isn't the direction you're going. Over time these differences become huge. When navigating you're more interested in where you are than your exact orientation... Who cares what direction you're pointing if you're stuck on some rocks?

A Compass is useful for holding an approximate course, and for taking bearings from buoys, landmarks and radio beacons in order to plot your course.

GPS is very good for sailing, but it's still very important to practice more traditional methods of navigation, such as using a sextant, as the day may come that your gps doesn't work. You won't know where you are and neither will anyone else. Then you could be in real trouble...

As a side note, It's well documented that magnetic north wanders about over time. I think almost all the charts I've seen have the bearing of magnetic north for each of the corners, with the calculated change in bearing per year...

Re:Duh.

[Guppy06]

"No. Neither of those will tell you which way you're pointing. Both of those tell you where you are (actually, the cellestial version will only tell you where you are with the aid of an accurate clock)."

Uh... no. There's this thing in the night sky called "the North Star." It's always north. It doesn't move, a function of the geographic pole rather than the magnetic one (and the more important of the two). And durning the day, the sun and a calendar can tell you which way is north. Compasses are only really necessary in cloudy weather.

North and south are easy, people figured it out even before the invention of the magnetic compass. The Vikings found North America without a magnetic compass. It's east and west you need a clock for.

Re:Duh.

[modmans2ndcoming]

tell that to all the mariners who used sextants before the invention of the compass.

Re:Duh.

[Spy Hunter]

No need for two GPS receivers. If you are moving, the GPS can easily tell which direction you are going, which is more important than the direction you are facing anyway (especially on a boat or plane where they might be different without an easy way to tell).

Re:Duh.

[sl4shd0rk]

>The stars, with even a rudimentary timepiece, are sufficient to provide a good
> guide to general direction.

If you have an analog (eg: big-hand, little-hand) wristwatch, you can find a general northerly direction by pointing a twig or matchstick in straight up position over the center-pin of the hands. slowly turn your body until the shadow of the matchstick falls over the hour-hand, 12 O'clock is "about" north. It's not perfect because the seasons have an affect on the shadow as well as how early or late in the day it is, but if you have no idea which way your direction is, but you know it's 10:00 am, this will get you some amount of certainty.

Re:Duh.

[barc0001]

Neither of those will tell you which way you're pointing.

???

My SportTrac Color has a compass function that tells me which way I point it....

Re:Duh.

[ananamouse]

>Just turn your compass around 180 degrees, then it'll be pointing South instead of North.
Nope. If you take a northern hemisphere compass to the southern hemisphere it will not work. The magnetic lines point straight down at the poles, horizontal at the equator and some angle in between every where else. There has to be a counter weight on one end of the compass needle to keep it horizontal and not rubbing on the bottom of the case. When you switch hemispheres that weight has to move to the other end of the needle.

A former sweatshop employer of mine had operations in Columbia and in Alaska. They had separate compasses for jobs in each location. The hands that were not smart enough to figure out why you could not use the same compass in Columbia and Alaska are still working for that employer being justifiablly exploited.

Re:Duh.

[Escaped Inmate]

The GPS sigal can be used to compute attitude/direction. Instead of using the standard code phase offsets and doppler for position and velocity, the receivers also use carrier phase processing and multiple antennas. By computing time of arrival offsets of specific carrier phases at each antenna, the system can determine angle of arrival. Think of this as sort of a reverse direction finding procedure, with very accurate transmitter, atomic clock timing source, and precisely known position of the transmitter. Arrange the attennas properly, and you can obtain a very precise attitude along any or all axes of interest. Your basic handheld receivers don't do this. In general, these systems are specifically built to purpose and can run you a good penny.

Re:Duh.

[Country_hacker]

Another method, if you find yourself without a matchstick (Who even carries those around any more?) is to point the hour hand toward the sun. The point between the hour hand and 12 is South. (North if you're in the Southern Hemisphere)

Re:Duh.

[pthisis]

Excellent post. Thank you for introducing me to a previously unknown poet. Here's another (very short) example of Masefield's work:

My road calls me, lures me,

    west, east, south and north

Most roads lead men homeward,

    my road leads me forth.

Re:Duh.

[bobbie4]

Doh!
Why not ask Homer if we can borrow his talking Astrolabe?

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you have a digital watch??

Re:Duh.

[YCrCb]

I have digital watch with compass.

Re:Duh.

[Jaqui]

While the flips may occur quickly on a geological timeframe, they take much longer than a human lifetime to occur and stabilize.

Yes and no, a couple of months back National Geographic Channel showed a documentary on the subject, the overall change is long term in human terms, but there are periods of relative stability during this process.
{ Magnetic Storm was the show title ]

The big issues are mentioned further on in this discussion, the loss of the magnetic field that protects us from solar radiation. This loss will damage any electronics that are not hardened against the radiation. Right now, the majority of such hardened electronics are all Military & Governmental systems. Most Sattelights will weather the effects fairly well, they do have more shielding to radiation than consumer products. But our cell phones, ipods, palm pilots, computers, tv's, stereos, POWER SYSTEMS will all fail.

The research into magnetic field reversals shows that over the last 3000 years it has changed 250 times, and indicate that within the next 50 to 100 years the next reversal will cause a failure in the magnetic field. The next reversal has already started, the strength of the magnetic field protecting us from the radiation of the sun has been dropping, since around 1950.

The final switch over may be as soon as 150 years, or as long as 300 years from now, but it is happening right now.

Re:Duh.

[hardkrash]

While I doubt mariners will ever stop being taught compass and celestial navigation (tradition is important), I can't imagine either will be needed 100 years from now, much less a thousand."

This may be true, but our ships compasses won't stop working nor pointing to true north either! First answer this, do ships still use magnetic compasses? answer NO!
Ships are made of steel and other metals, thus causing deviation on a magnetic compass so we use gyro compasses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_compass
Also for you GPS folks a GPS compass that uses the phase angles of the signals to determine true north go look for a Furuno SC-60 or similar.

Re:Duh.

[Eivind]

First, frequent enough position-fixes is equivalent to constantly knowing which direction you're headed. A ships course isn't *that* erratic. If GPS can tell you that you've moved 300 m directly west since one minute ago, it's not a very hard task to keep the course steady enough that odds are in another minute you'll have moved another 300m west (plus minus a few degrees). You do *not* need more data to be sure you're moving west.

You may, or may not be *facing* west, it's quite possible you're facing south-west but you are in a northbound current. But you generally care about which way you're moving more than which way you're facing. If your target is west of you you want to *move* west, if that means *facing* south-west, then that's perfectly fine.

Secondly, using the stars to tell what way you're *facing* is trivial, even with no timepiece. There's these things named the polar star and the south cross

Re:Duh.

[jsight]

Of course, those are calibrated frequently with magnetic compasses to compensate for drift. :)

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbass, GPS can too tell you which direction you are moving. You, too, just have to be moving. Next time, STFU you ignorant fucktard.

Re:Duh.

[Vintermann]

"As for GPS (the most accurate versions) two appliances at opposite ends of a vessel together with suitable calculations would give you the orientation of the vessel. (I have no idea if this is ever done.)"

Some students at my school did it as their final project some years ago.

Re:Duh.

[vrt3]

At work we sell navigation software (mainly for inland navigation) and we often do just that: a GPS on the bow and one on the stern; we just read the GPS positions and calculate the heading in software. There are better solutions though, but they are also more expensive. JRC for example sells a GPS compass which calculates the difference between the GPS positions in an earlier stage of the signal processing.

Re:Duh.

[AJWM]

The point between the hour hand and 12 is South.

If you're on daylight savings time, it's between the hour hand and 1.

North if you're in the Southern Hemisphere)

And if you're on the equator, you're SOL. (Actually, if you're anywhere between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, it will depend on what time of year it is.)

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It does flip over night. As time pass the field decreases in strength and for a period of time (perhaps for hundred years) compasses will not work because the field is too week for them to operate.

Re:Duh.

[gardyloo]

The research into magnetic field reversals shows that over the last 3000 years it has changed 250 times, and indicate that within the next 50 to 100 years the next reversal will cause a failure in the magnetic field. The next reversal has already started, the strength of the magnetic field protecting us from the radiation of the sun has been dropping, since around 1950.

    Whoa. Your basic information is right, but there are order-of-magnitude errors here. You might be mixing up the sun's magnetic field with that of the earth (Sol's field flips about once ever 7 to 15 years); the earth's switches polarities as rapidly as once every 50000 years, but it's often roughly constant for tens of millions of years.

electronic dependence

[pilybaby]

Our ancestors may have lived through this several times before but wont it affect us more as we are highly dependent on electricity and satalites etc?

Re:electronic dependence

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

wont it affect us more as we are highly dependent on electricity and satalites etc?

Yeah, I forgot we have electricity and satalites thanks to the Earth's magnetic field...

Re:electronic dependence

[suv4x4]

Our ancestors may have lived through this several times before but wont it affect us more as we are highly dependent on electricity and satalites etc?

And then they say movies have no bad effect on youth...

Re:electronic dependence

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I forgot we have electricity and satalites thanks to the Earth's magnetic field...

Apparently you also forgot that the earth's magnetic field is protecting satellites from the bulk of harmful solar radiation... if the magnetosphere disappeared during this process, it would probably critically damage most of our satellite networks.

Re:electronic dependence

[Sponge Bath]

...affect us more as we are highly dependent on electricity

It won't affect my stereo because I'm using Monster
brand cables with a special anti polar reversal coating.
The extended warranty I was sold should keep it
functional for the 2000 years it takes to complete the process.

Man, Best Buy rocks!

Re:electronic dependence

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you also forgot that the earth's magnetic field is protecting satellites from the bulk of harmful solar radiation...

Components in satellites are rad-hardened because the Earth's magnetic field does not protect them from solar radiation. Broken satellites will not be much of a worry. The increased levels of solar radiation on the ground will be.

Re:electronic dependence

[discord5]

we are highly dependent on electricity and satalites etc?

and not to forget spellcheckers

Re:electronic dependence

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading about some crackpot who thought that all electricity would start to flow backwards, causing all our devices to stop working (if transistorized) or at best run backwards. Hah!

Re:electronic dependence

[Mr. Underbridge]

Not only that, but probably many people *didn't* live through it due to the insane rates of skin cancer.

Re:electronic dependence

[Firethorn]

Call me crazy, but didn't people have a short enough expected life span back then that, on average, it wouldn't be a problem?

Hmmm... Then again, could our thing about not going outside without clothing be a remnent of the last reversal? ;)

Re:electronic dependence

[TrekkieGod]

Components in satellites are rad-hardened because the Earth's magnetic field does not protect them from solar radiation.

Well, sort of. Satellites at orbits that take them through the South Atlantic Anomaly have to withstand a few minutes unprotected by the magnetic field per orbital cycle. Their lifetimes would definitely decrease if they were exposed to the radiation the entire time, I have no idea by how much. Then again, since the Van Allen belt exists due to the trapping of solar wind by the Earth's magnetic field, the satellites might be fine after all.

Re:electronic dependence

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I think it's pretty safe to say that events 2000 years into the future won't affect any of us.

Re:electronic dependence

[Ohreally_factor]

Apparently he was able to overcome that particular addiction.

Re:electronic dependence

[LordOfTheNoobs]

Speak for yourself, mortal.


:p

Re:electronic dependence

[giorgiofr]

Just wait for the singularity, man...

Re:electronic dependence

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I remember reading some anonymously posted comment posted on slashdot by some guy who claimed that he read about some crackpot who claimed that the pole reversal would make electricity flow backwards. The comment didn't get modded up, but curiously, for some mysterious reason, a self-referential comment about this comment, which added nothing informative to the original, did (but then later was modded down again).

Re:electronic dependence

[Mr. Freeman]

Given the speed that this happens at, it will give the people that control those satellites plenty of time to correct for it.

I also don't think there's any way that any of the (man-made) satellites we have now could possibly be orbiting in 2000 years.

Re:electronic dependence

[Anonymous Coward]

um, thank you for that um, informative information.

Re:electronic dependence

[c0p0n]

Actually, I believe that earth's magnetic field protects the planet and surroundings from solar flares that happen ocassionally. I wonder if this is the case, and what effect could it have on us and all machinery we have spinning on orbit.

Re:electronic dependence

[menace3society]

I wouldn't worry so much about the polarity-changing aspect of the situation, but rather the inevitable increase in the Earth's magnetic field once it occurs. Greater field strength -> more E-M interference for digital equipment. I suppose it will be possible to shield everything in the 2000+ years it will take for the reversal, but it's nevertheless an interesting thought.

Re:electronic dependence

[rubycodez]

midrange sounds kind of tinny, though

Re:electronic dependence

[ocelotbob]

True, but I imagine that during the period where solar radiation would be problematic, we'd just have greater sales of substances like zinc oxide to block solar rays, Putting on sunscreen would be just like putting on a shirt in the morning.

Re:electronic dependence

[Anonymous Coward]

"Greater field strength -> more E-M interference for digital equipment."

I thought only alternating current produced interference?!?

Re:electronic dependence

[Mr. Underbridge]

RTFA. That period is 5000 years, not a couple of months. And ZnO isn't perfect.

Re:electronic dependence

[tverbeek]

Call me crazy, but didn't people have a short enough expected life span back then that, on average, it wouldn't be a problem?

Do you realize we're talking about literally geologic timeframes here? The "people" living at the time of the last pole reversal weren't even Homo sapiens; they were every middle-school boy's favorite laugh line: Homo erectus.

Hmmm... Then again, could our thing about not going outside without clothing be a remnent of the last reversal? ;)

Maybe, but probably not the way you're thinking. There was a significant migration of primitive humans northward (i.e. into Europe) around the same time (again, geologically speaking), which made clothing desirable to keep warm.

long term effects

[adolfojp]

If this slow reversal is happening as we speak; what effect could it have on bird migration and magnetotactic bacteria?

Re:long term effects

[koweja]

Well, birds obviously managed to survive other reversals, so there is not reason to expect that they won't survive this. Overall at least. I'm sure many individual birds will get screwed, and we may lose a few species in the process. But, that's how nature works.

Re:long term effects

[BigCheese]

That will be interesting to see. They probably have a mechanism for handling it since it happens periodically.
I'm sure the biggest result of magnetic field reversal will be the number of PhDs granted.

Re:long term effects

[adolfojp]

"I'm sure the biggest result of magnetic field reversal will be the number of PhDs granted."

Sir, you win the prize for the best quote of the day!

Re:long term effects

[novastar123]

maybe they used to fly north for the winter instead of south?

Re:long term effects

[DAldredge]

Not sure. But we do know that Earth First! will blame the problem on humanity.

Re:long term effects

[Haertchen]

I'm pretty sure that birds use multiple cues to know which direction to go. Do they notice, for instance, where the sun rises and sets? Do they remember landmarks from year to year? Is it instictive for them to head north/south, or is there a little switch in their brain that says "Learn which direction is which and then follow it?"

Basically, I think a little redundancy and plasticity in their brains could solve this problem without much biological innovation.

Re:long term effects

[LiquidCoooled]

Birds in the southern hemisphere already fly north for the winter.
That should tell you more than anything about birds:

They prefer to be warm and they don't give a damn about the magnetic pole.

(actually, you would probably confuse some birds, but its the warmth they are seeking, not a compass bearing)

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully they have some kind of redundant system. Specifically for diurnal animals; surely the would notice that the sun is coming up and setting on their wrong side.

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah but maybe they don't and this sort of thing is one of the causes of rapid evolutionary changes for those species. Maybe we'll see a flurry of new bird species when some of them are forced into new habitats over the next 2000 years.

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

we may lose a few species in the process. But, that's how nature works.

If only that was all that would happen... It's really much more of a crisis than that. Trillions of USD will be spent trying to save these species after they are put on the endangered species list in the U.S.

I can see it now, electromagnets will distributed throughout the U.S. to keep the field unchanged within our borders - every building built will be required to have a giant solar array and giant batteries powering giant magnets to "do their part" to maintain the magnetic field as close as possible to what it is today...

...then the damn birds will prove to be stupid ingrates who just fly over the US border and, once exposed to the "new natural magnetism", instantly go into some sort of horrible spiral flight pattern until they die of exhaustion.

Oh, and don't forget the endless productivity sapping debates on "is man causing the magnetic shift or is it just a natural phenomena".

Folks, this will be a disaster.

Re:long term effects

[ultranova]

I'm sure many individual birds will get screwed, and we may lose a few species in the process.

According to Wikipedia, magnetic reversals happen from 1 to 5 times per million years. That is not long enough time for a new species to evolve. Which in turn means that every currently existing bird species survived the last reversal. So why would they perish this time either ?

Of course we might get lucky and the migrating flocks of bird-flu carrying birds who were about to wipe out the human species will all get lost and drown in the middle of the Atlantic. Once again, the day is saved, thanks to Geomagnetic Reversal !-)

Re:long term effects

[orkysoft]

How do you know that 200,000 to 1,000,000 years isn't enough time for new bird species to evolve? Hell, the human species isn't even a million years old.

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing is certain... you will always be an ignorant asshole no matter what happens in the world.

Re:long term effects

[gkhan1]

Well, yeah, that and 15 million compasses will stop working :P

I imagine that the animals dependant on the magnetic field for direction will simply adapt, natural selection style. I realise that 2000 years aint that long, evolutionary wise, but they've survived it before, they'll do it again.

Re:long term effects

[Mistshadow2k4]

I doubt it. The climate has more to do with them flying south than the magnetic field. Sure, they use the magnetic field to navigate, but that's not why they fly south. They would start flying north only if the climate changed so that north was warmer. In the meantime, as another poster stated above, some birds will die because they can't always navigate correctly during migration and possibly even a few species could become extinct because of it. On the other hand, I'm not sure any species would become extinct, since (like sailors of old) they also use temperature and even smell to navigate by.

Re:long term effects

[edwardpickman]

There's already evidence that it's happening. More and more birds are either showing up in the wrong place or are being found in areas they aren't native to. We aren't talking large numbers yet but there's been a weakening of the magnetic field for hundreds of years and some birds seem to be having trouble following the weaker field. Birds will compensate since it's a gradual process but it may result in some non native species establishing themselves in new areas. Nature tends to taske care of itself but electronics will be at risk. Apparently there's a mechanism to compensate for the lack of a magnetic field so there won't be a dramatic increase in solar radiation. The world has been through this process for millions of years and life goes on. I think it's avoiding the end of the world doom and gloom in large part due to how slow it happens. I've heard estimates of four hundred to a thousand years for the poles to reverse. Probably be 4,000 or 5,000 AD before we have a proper magnetic field again. It's no fun if you can't put an actual date to the end of the world.

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Likely no major effect, since the few birds that fly the wrong direction will be naturally selected out of the gene pool when they fly off the edge of the earth.

Re:long term effects

[koweja]

I'm sure many individual birds will get screwed, and we may lose a few species in the process.

Oh, that was just a guess on my part since species sometimes can't handle dramatic changes. Of course, we don't really know how dramatic of a change this will be for them. Maybe all will survive, maybe only a certain percent of them will, but it's highly unlikely that we're looking at a 100% extinction rate.

Re:long term effects

[Androclese]

It would explain why those damn Canadian Geese have been landing in my pond more and more instead of continuing on down south. Too bad we can't use their poop as fuel, we would never want for petrol again. Ever.

If you just laughed, then you must have seen the same mess I do every year. yuk

Re:long term effects

[nwbvt]

"That will be interesting to see. They probably have a mechanism for handling it since it happens periodically."

Well sure, if by "peridically" you mean completely at random, with the length of time averaging a couple hundred thousand years. But that alone won't be often enough to prompt the natural selection needed to evolve a mechanism for handling magnetic field reversals. Its possible that something very simple could evolve over the thousand years or so in which the field is shrinking, but that would likely be lost over the next few hundred thousand years in which it wouldn't be used. A lot has happened since the last time one of these occured, including the evolution of a bunch of monkeys throwing crap around to human beings (ok, maybe not that much has changed after all).

That being said, you are not going to see birds flying into buildings like in that stupid movie "The Core", anymore than it would cause boy scouts to walk into lakes because their compasses are off. Birds don't just blindly fly by the magnetic field alone, their main tool for navigation is their eyes.

Re:long term effects

[Maxo-Texas]

I mostly agree with you with the caveat that if this caused a high level extinction, then the extreme pressure would select for some system of surviving the change and that system might be represented in a higher percentage of the population with each reversal.

Given a lack of evidence of mass extinction from these reversals, whatever systems there might be are probably selected out as noise/slightly expensive in the years between each event.

Re:long term effects

[Bloke down the pub]

maybe they used to fly north for the winter instead of south?

I live in Australia[1] you insensitive drongo!!!

P.S. compasses here work backwards anyway. Something to do with the water coming up the plughole instead of going down it. Or something. Giz another beer, mate!

[1] Disclaimer: I do not live in Australia.

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe all straight people will become gay and vice versa.

Re:long term effects

[pionzypher]

Birds would fly north for the winter. Poor things...

Re:long term effects

[Melllvar]

Indeed, they do use other cues:

Over the years laboratory experiments have shown that birds orient themselves based on cues from the sun, stars, Earth's magnetic field, and by memorizing landmarks while migrating. But the relative importance of such cues was unknown and a source of scientific debate.

Makes sense. Any animal whose life cycle was entirely dependent on a single environmental variable would be one that wouldn't exist for any longer than an evolutionary flash in the pan.

Re:long term effects

[maxume]

It isn't well understood:

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/migrate-magne tic.html

They are not however, seeking warmth. The intra-trip temperature variation outweighs any seasonal variation, they are navigating by habit or instinct.

Re:long term effects

[Bobsledboy]

[1] Disclaimer: I do not live in Australia.

But you certainly are the bloke down the pub.

Re:long term effects

[cordt]

...That is not long enough time for a new species to evolve...

Actually, evolution comes in fits and spirts. Something that Steven J. Gould refered to as "Punctuated Equilibrium." The rate of evolution is dictated by the instability of the environment, and/or increases in selective pressures. And an environment with increased amounts of solar radiation and the instability of the magnetosphere may well account for a sudden increase in the rate of evolution, perhaps even spawning an adaptive radiation or six...

If interested, this link http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~theobal/PE.html provides more info than any layman would really want about the topic of my irrelevant tangent...

Re:long term effects

[Anonymous Coward]

...What - d'you mean an African Swallow, or a European...??

Re:long term effects

[cutedinochick]

You're right, in that the rate of evolution changes. However, that paper by Eldridge and Gould on Punctuated Equlibrium (Gould was not the primary author, though he made the idea well-known later) was based on fossil evidence. Due to the incompleteness of the fossil record, "fits and starts" seem to typify most evolution! Whenever the fossil record seems more complete (some marine strata), evolution seems to progress much more gradually rather than in fits and starts. It is also unclear as to what adaptive radiations are, exactly - whether or not cladogenesis exists at all is debateable.

This is why there's so much debate as to the rates of evolution - people who study fossils see much different patterns than people who study extant taxa. This may be a time artefact (i.e., we've only been observing evolution in extant taxa for about 100, 150 years or so, whereas we have 3.8 By of time in the fossil record, albeit incomplete) but my point is, our resolutions are very different.

That said, I will get back onto topic by saying that I have no clue what will happen to migratory birds during a magnetic reversal. My guess is that they will continue to do what they're used to doing year after year, and will adjust to the polarity changes eventually. The species that go extinct will be those where only one generation migrates (they only live a year or so, and so can't rely on past experience of where to go), but these usually happen to be weedy species that may be able to adjust better than others anyway, due to the shorter generation times (usually = faster evolution).

Yei!

[suv4x4]

The results suggest that there may be a reversal of earth's magnetic field in about 2000 years.

Let the War on Polar Reversal begin!

Re:Yei!

[Hogwash McFly]

War On Terra?

Re:Yei!

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the Bush administration prefers to call it the Global Struggle against Violent Extremist Polar Reversals.

Re:Yei!

[rolandog]

We just need to get Nature to cooperate with Us.

Caveman PCs

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, unless I'm mistaken, our ancestors didn't have a lot of technology that relied on magnetics. I think I'll still fret if you don't mind.

Re:Caveman PCs

[jrmcferren]

The only thing I can seen being affected by a pole reversal would be a CRT. If the idiots 2000 years from now are still using those things, all they would have to do:
1. Remove CRT
2. Rotate CRT 180 degrees so the top is on the bottom.
3. Rotate magnets and yoke
4. Reinsert CRT and re-align
5. Use CRT

The same procedure would be used for moving from northern hemisphere to sothern hemisphere or vice versa.

Re:Caveman PCs

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Tell me: how exactly do CRTs rely on the Earth's magnetic field? Or do you believe all magnetic fields in the word are going to reverse?

Re:Caveman PCs

[MustardMan]

They don't RELY on it, but they must COMPENSATE for it. Moving electrons are affected by magnetic fields - monitors calibrated to correct for the field in the northern hemisphere will have the colors slightly skewed if you move them south of the equator.

Re:Caveman PCs

[Anonymous Coward]

He also seems to believe CRTs need to be calibrated for the hemisphere they're in. What a dumbass.

Re:Caveman PCs

[LiquidCoooled]

The CRT tube is tuned to negate the magnetic influence in the hemisphere its designed for.
If you take a Northern tube and go to Australia with it (or vice versa), the screen may need correction.

See here for more info

Re:Caveman PCs

[fbjon]

Modern tubes can be adjusted, and they degauss themselves on startup, so it won't be a problem.

The real problem is if we're still using CRT's 2000 years from now.

Re:Caveman PCs

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha what? I think it is YOU who are slightly skewed.

Re:Caveman PCs

[Anonymous Coward]

From repairfaq

All other monitors will degrade picture quality when the degaussing is not
able to completely compensate for the earth magnetic field. With a tube built
for the wrong hemisphere it is possible that the effect of the vertical
component of the earth magnetic field will give a residual landing error.
This can not be corrected by turning any of the available adjustments,
digital or not. Re-alignment might become a very costly job.

( But also... )

Note that is it quite possible that you will never encounter any of these
problems. The extent to which your particular monitor or TV is affected
depends on many factors - many of which you have no control over.

Re:Caveman PCs

[Blakey Rat]

monitors calibrated to correct for the field in the northern hemisphere will have the colors slightly skewed if you move them south of the equator.

Oh MY GOD!!! I thought there was nothing to worry about but now my COLORS ARE SLIGHTLY SKEWED on my 2000-year-old monitor! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!

Re:Caveman PCs

[SnotBob]

As long as you can still make me some roast duck with mango sauce I'll be happy.

Re:Caveman PCs

[Derling Whirvish]

He also seems to believe CRTs need to be calibrated for the hemisphere they're in. What a dumbass.

Ummm, dude, they do.

Read this: Northern/Southern Hemisphere corrections and adjustments

Careful whom you call a "dumbass" for they could be the one who is correct and you the one who is wrong.

Re:Caveman PCs

[tmasssey]

That's roast duck with mango *salsa*, you Philistine! And I don't have much of an appetite.

Re:Caveman PCs

[DeadChobi]

15 minutes can save you 15% on your car insurance!

Re:Caveman PCs

[kylegordon]

And then you press the big button labelled 'degauss' and all is good again...

Re:Caveman PCs

[MustardMan]

As others have pointed out, degauss isn't always enough.

Imagine the customers....

[MindPrison]

...faces when they return to the shop to complain about their compasses showing the wrong direction.

Re:Imagine the customers....

[FloodSpectre]

They're already off by a number of degrees, and have been for awhile now. That's why there's "true north" and "magnetic north". I think, but I'm not entirely sure, that compasses and other navigational devices currently compensate for the difference.

Re:Imagine the customers....

[smillie]

That's why it's called "Mother Earth"; it keeps changing it's mind about which way to go.

Re:Imagine the customers....

[g2devi]

Remember we're talking about "geological time" not "web time", so big changes like this happen a lot slower. According to Wikipedia:
"At present, the overall geomagnetic field is becoming weaker at a rate which would, if it continues, cause the dipole field to temporarily collapse by 3000-4000 AD."

So it'll be a bit of time before that happens. If I understand it correctly, it'll slowly get weaker and weaker until it just disappears before slowly coming back on the flip side. Hopefully the slowness will give us time to migrate off of a dependence on magnetic fields to tell us where we are, and hopefully animals will also have time to readjust and find alternative ways of knowing where they are.

Re:Imagine the customers....

[jadavis]

that compasses and other navigational devices currently compensate for the difference

How would that work? How would the compass know which way to compensate and by how much?

Re:Imagine the customers....

[FloodSpectre]

I have no idea, it's just what I've read. Maybe you compensate for it youself ?

Re:Imagine the customers....

[ceoyoyo]

You compensate for it yourself. You can get a table of corrections for various locations. Take the reading from the compass, add or subtract the correction and that gives you your true heading.

The deviation is fairly significant where I grew up (about -26 degrees).

Re:Imagine the customers....

[ipfwadm]

Take the reading from the compass, add or subtract the correction and that gives you your true heading.

Or, if you're smart/lazy, you buy a compass that lets you dial in the current declination. That way the arrow you line up the needle with is offset by the amount of the declination, which makes the resulting bearing already true. No messy addition/subtraction (and it's always a pain to remember whether you need to add or subtract to get to true). Such compasses go for $50 and up or so.

Re:Imagine the customers....

[ipfwadm]

The compasses in GPS units ("other navigational devices" in the GP's words) should be able to compensate. Since they know where you are on the earth, they'd be able to know what the correct declination is. Anybody with one of these units know for sure?

north = ?

[novastar123]

Does this mean that for a while, depending on how long it takes for the field to reverse that there will be no north or south magnetic pole?

Re:north = ?

[novus ordo]

I think the bigger issue is that there will be no magnetic field. You know, the thing that protects you from million mph plasma spewing off the sun.

Re:north = ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the million mph plasma that killed off all humanity last time the magnetic field flipped. Thank god those aliens came along to repopulate the planet from scraps of DNA they found lying about the place.

moron.

Re:north = ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not entirely. There will actually be several poles.

The Earth's magnetic field isn't just a dipole (2 pole) field. There are other components of the field, quadurpole (4 pole), octopole (8 pole), etc.. Normally, these components are at least on oder of magnitude weaker than the dipole component. During a magnetic field reversal, the dipole component is so weak that the other components become important. The Earth will then have several sets of weak magnetic poles, at various places around the Earth.

Re:north = ?

[6ULDV8]

Offsite backup poles?

Re:north = ?

[novus ordo]

I don't know what you are talking about, but I'm talking about the solar wind. And saying that there would be no impact to life without the magnetic field, even on orders of a few years, is pretty close to the kind of logic Bush uses to say there is no global warming.

Re:north = ?

[ocelotbob]

No, because we don't use jupiter's pole in the interim. This is more of a RAIP - Redundant Array of Independent Poles.

Re:north = ?

[prjames]

The Earth will then have several sets of weak magnetic poles, at various places around the Earth.

One of which caused Winny the Pooh and his chum Christopher Robin to set out on an expotition to The North Pole......

Re:north = ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not entirely. There will actually be several poles."

Well there are already millions of Poles, about 37 million living in Poland alone..

Re:north = ?

[wkitchen]

...oder of magnitude...

I've occasionally been accused of emitting such.

Slightly off...

[Justifiable_Delusion]

To say just because our ancestors lived through it 780 million years ago does NOT mean that we will do just fine and shouldn't fret. Maybe something like this occuring leads to accelerated mutations and changes in the human genome (or all animals for that reason). I would like to see if there were any studies done looking at genetics before and after each of these flips in the general population of living things. The planets surface is BATHED is radiation. To think this would have no affect on us would be foolish. We will have to change the way we live. Skin cancer now a days is bad enough....imagine multiplying it by a factor of 10,000.

SPF my ass.

Re:Slightly off...

[MadTinfoilHatter]

That's a good point. Geomagnetic reversal is actually a relatively poorly understood phenomenon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal and it's hard to predict exactly what would happen.

I suppose there are a lot of scientists who'd be delighted to see one take place - it'd be the first chance to study the phenomenon up close.

Re:Slightly off...

[orfeo]

Any maybe it leads to slowed mutations and changes in the human genome. Skin cancer is bad today, imagine dividing it by a factor of 10,000.

Re:Slightly off...

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to rub your ass!

Re:Slightly off...

[4D6963]

To say just because our ancestors lived through it 780 million years

780 million years ago, there was nothing close to a monkey on earth. There wasn't even any ammonites IIRC. I think you mean 780,000 years ago.

As for your skin cancer concern, I saw a show about the very topic of magnetic field reversal on TV about one year ago. They explained basically what this article explains about the field weakening and all that, and they answered to the question of whether cancers due to the the lack of a magnetic field would wipe all of us out of the surface of us, and the answer was that the number of cancers due to that wouldn't be that significant, however I forgot the estimates.

Re:Slightly off...

[PhotoGuy]

I guess what I'm curious about, is how animals (birds come to mind first) will deal with their reliance on magnetic fields. Has anyone done any studies on whether or not migratory bird can evolve quiclky enough to adapt to the modified magnetic fields. Is their "compass synchronization" that seens innate, a matter of what they cue into when they're born and growing up, or an evoluationary thing. It's hard to imagine evolution (which takes millions of years to adapt) keeping up with such a short term magnetic reversal.

I'm guessing, and hoping, that the birds innately can handle chanes in the magenetic field, as long as it doesn't change within their relatively short lifetimes.

Anyone know?

Re:Slightly off...

[mikael]

You can do a google search for "Great lakes" "nuclear event",

TERRESTRIAL EVIDENCE OF A NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE IN PALEOINDIAN TIMES

There seems to be a supernova event that actually managed to heat the atmosphere to 1000C, melt glaciers and possibly cook large mammals as well.

Re:Slightly off...

[mOdQuArK!]

Hmmm...somehow I doubt increased exposure to solar radiation is going to reduce the indicidents of gene mutation.

It would be nice if all our cancer research starts paying off.

Re:Slightly off...

[gEvil (beta)]

It's also entirely possible that the last reversal 780,000 years ago (not million) created the conditions that allowed apes/mankind evolve into what we are now. The truth is that we really have no idea what the effects of a pole reversal will be or how they will affect the Earth or us.

Re:Slightly off...

[Sannish]

Skin cancer now a days is bad enough....imagine multiplying it by a factor of 10,000.

Well that implies that you actually go outside.

Re:Slightly off...

[tongue]

seriously, there's only a few viable scenarios here:
*we all kill ourselves off long before that through some kind of global warfare
* we are reduced to a scattering of stone age civilizations from said warfare
* we don't have said warfare, and aliens make contact in the meantime, and we're all enslaved or otherwise screwed (for anyone who doesn't think we'll be getting f'ed in the A if aliens show up, here's a quarter, buy a clue.)
* we survive any or all of the above, and manage to colonize other worlds (probably f'ing in the A some other civilization)

the largest effect of a magnetic pole reversal would be on our technology, especially communications tech. in all of those scenarios except #3, it doesn't really matter that much. in #3 it could actually be helpful to the resistance movement

Re:Slightly off...

[RealGrouchy]

I saw a show about the very topic of magnetic field reversal on TV about one year ago.

Oh, yeah? Well *I* saw a show a few years back where they travelled to the sun and took pictures of themselves. And they didn't suffer at all, except Arnold wished he hadn't come to school that day, and they had to change the tires on the Magic School Bus the next week.

Gimme a break; cite your sources. Otherwise you're just spreading weak rumours.

- RG>

Re:Slightly off...

[ceoyoyo]

Not quite. Skin cancer is believed to be caused by UV radiation. The magnetic field has absolutely no effect on UV. What the magnetic field DOES help to block is charged particles, particularly protons.

People living at high latitudes and on the equator or flying planes for a living already get quite a bit more proton radiation than everybody else. British Airways has monitored their flight crews for a couple of decades and found that, despite the higher exposure, life expectancy was higher and cancer rates lower.

Re:Slightly off...

[wtarreau]

780 million years ago, there was nothing close to a monkey on earth. There wasn't even any ammonites IIRC

IIRC ?
No monkeys, no ammonites, but you were there ? Damn ! I'm wondering what you're looking like !

Re:Slightly off...

[4D6963]

you were there

You troll, ever heard of fossiles?

Re:Slightly off...

[4D6963]

Gimme a break; cite your sources

Quit trolling. It's no weak rumor, you fool, but I can't cite my sources if I don't remember and I won't bother looking for sources to confirm what I saw just to please trolls of your kind.

Re:Slightly off...

[4D6963]

lol I don't mean to sound rude, but you should read/watch less sci-fi. These four scenarios don't sound very likely, even the fourth. As for the effect on the communications, as big or weak as it will be, we will have time to foresee and do what it takes to prevent any problems.

Re:Slightly off...

[nwbvt]

No, our monkey ancestors were not around. But some form of our ancestors were. And I'm sure there were magnetic field reversals then as well. So he is right (even if that wasn't what he meant).

Re:Slightly off...

[pklinken]

Well you know, every generation there are a bunch of birds that fly north in winter, and this time they wont be the suckers.

Re:Slightly off...

[Decaff]

Maybe something like this occuring leads to accelerated mutations and changes in the human genome (or all animals for that reason).

This is extremely unlikely. We probably get most of our protection from solar and cosmic radiation from the atmosphere, not from the magnetic field. There may be minor ground-level radiation increases during a reveral, but probably nothing signficant. The most significant effect will be spectacular aurorae all the way to the equator!

Significant areas around the poles are not protected by the magnetic field - in fact the field focuses charged particles to there, causing the aurorae. Are there any reports of people and animals in those regions suffering increased mutation rates? I doubt it.

Re:Slightly off...

[4D6963]

But some form of our ancestors were. And I'm sure there were magnetic field reversals then as well. So he is right (even if that wasn't what he meant).

Hahaha, some form of our ancestors, as you'll see here, 780 million years ago, our ancestors consisted mainly of Proterospongia. Do you think we can compare their survival to ours? Now that you know that, do you still think he's right?

Re:Slightly off...

[hitmark]

hmm, free radiation therapy maybe?

Re:Slightly off...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have no monkey ancestors. Our ancestors were the predecessors to apes.

Re:Slightly off...

[ceoyoyo]

It seems our cells do better if they're stressed a bit from time to time. Same as our immune systems.

Re:Slightly off...

[hitmark]

true, just like having a workout helps us keep fit (and that reminds me to get my meat moving a bit more).

but to much stress can create just as much problems as to little ;)

Re:Slightly off...

[ceoyoyo]

Definitely. Hanging around too much radiation isn't a good idea.

The atmosphere absorbs a lot of charged radiation though. The magnetic field helps out, but if it were to disappear it wouldn't be like we're hanging out on the naked face of the moon. I don't think anybody really has a handle on what changes we could expect, but it's not sure fire disaster. In fact, since our ancestors have survived one reversal and life in general has survived quite a few, it would seem it's not going to kill us all.

Re:Slightly off...

[nwbvt]

Yes, I know what form of life existed back then, but good job looking them up. You've shown yourself to be very skilled at typing in a search phrase in for the wikipedia (though if you read the little blurb that references our ancestors of the period, you would find they probably did not include Proterospongia, so you might want to brush up on your reading skills). But most theories of evolution involve complex forms of life (such as us) evolving from simple forms of life (such as sponge-like creatures). So yes, our ancestors do probably include some form of simple animals very much like sponges, which were able to survive magnetic field reversals. If that disturbs you, go have fun reading "Of Pandas and People".

And neither I nor the origional poster claimed you could compare the survival rates of our ancestors (be they primates or simple animals), in fact he argued the exact opposite. So yes he was correct, even though (as I stated before) sponge-like animals are probably not what he meant when he mentioned "our ancestors".

Please excuse any typos as it is late, and excuse any mean-spirted sarcastic remarks as I am too tired to take crap from people who think that because they have the wikipedia as their homepage, they know everything there is to know about the world.

Re:Slightly off...

[Decaff]

the largest effect of a magnetic pole reversal would be on our technology, especially communications tech.

Go on - please list exactly which technologies are likely to be effected by this. We rarely even use the magnetic field for navigation these days. I can't thing of a single technology where this will have any impact at all.

Re:Slightly off...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't abuse him for your ignorance. There was and is a documentary on this very subject, it was ont he discovery channel about a yer or so ago.

Re:Slightly off...

[4D6963]

fool, if you gotta talk shit everytime you're contradicted when you're tired rather go to bed. talking shit just cuz I get my info from wikipedia, I could have as well took it from some of the geology books that I used to study like 10 years ago.

Re:Slightly off...

[nwbvt]

You would have gotten pretty much the same response had you cited your high school "Rocks for Jocks" textbook. It was the content of your post and your cocky attitude while writing it, the wikipedia just gave me an easy way to make fun of you (incidentally, so would a "Rocks for Jocks" textbook).

Re:Slightly off...

[orfeo]

umm the post was about magnetic reversal, not increased radiation.

Re:Slightly off...

[mOdQuArK!]

If you've been reading about the subject, then you'd know that the magnetic reversal allows greater solar radiation to hit the surface of the planet while the magnetic field is in transition.

I think I saw this on the nature channel

[Attrition_cp]

I hear the penguins call it the War of Northern Aggression.

It will be like Y2K again....

[madnuke]

Planes will fall from the sky, satelites will land in swimming pools, blender will attack. Boy scouts will get lost. On a more serious note, wouldnt this wreck satelites and humans before didnt have telecomunications they thought the world was flat, it would really disrupt modern living.

Re:It will be like Y2K again....

[Anonymous Coward]

On a more serious note, wouldnt this wreck satelites and humans before didnt have telecomunications they thought the world was flat, it would really disrupt modern living.

Good know fine explanation dindt understand one thing maybe time next commas write adverbs conjunctions, it would really disrupt comments like this.

Re:It will be like Y2K again....

[AlexanderDitto]

blender will attack

AAAAARGH! I've being frappe-ed!

No, but seriously. Satalites don't really rely on the earth's magnetic field. We don't really use it all that much. The laws of physics aren't reversing here, people, what we previously deemed north will now be south, and vice versa. The magnetic field's not going AWAY.

The only thing I wonder is of the time during the switch. How long will it take? How will compasses react? Will the field be weaker, and if so, what of increased exposure to the solar wind?

Wear your sunscreen, children!

Actually..

[The Living Fractal]

The reversal of the Earth's magnetic field is the result of something much more serious. It goes beyond simple geo-magneto-thermal oscillation: In actuality, the entire *universe* began to turn inside-out after hearing......

Britney Spears is pregnant again. ;D

my harddrive...

[dhruvx]

can i still use my harddrive? :)

No field?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, say at the end of 2000th year, north will *suddenly* become south?

(FlightIC401 to control: What the fuck is going on guys? Seems like I am heading back to JFK instead of landing at SFO)

Or there will be some time where there wont be any north or south, and gradually field will again become strong, but with reverse poles?

Either way, its gonna be funny...

Earths shielding?

[jupiter909]

How does all this relate to the Earths field saving us from being turned into toast from the Sun's and other harmful effects. Do we go into a stage of danger and then end up being safe again once the field is reversed? They do not make mention of this. I know that a few solar flares and computers and power grids can go down when Earth can't deflect it. With it growing weaker are we now at great risk?

Lots of questions, I need answers.

Re:Earths shielding?

[ClickOnThis]

How does all this relate to the Earths field saving us from being turned into toast from the Sun's and other harmful effects. Do we go into a stage of danger and then end up being safe again once the field is reversed? They do not make mention of this. I know that a few solar flares and computers and power grids can go down when Earth can't deflect it. With it growing weaker are we now at great risk?

The Sun's magnetic field reverses every eleven years. It's the relative orientation of the solar and terrestrial magnetic field that would make a difference. Even when the fields are oriented in opposite directions (thereby weakening the earth's protection from the solar wind) the terrestrial field is still strong enough to protect us.

Now, I'm not sure whether the earth's field would remain uniformly strong as it reversed over 2000 years, but if it did, then the sun is a non-issue. We might even be okay if it did weaken, because currents in the earth's ionosphere would induce a magnetic field in response to the solar effects, as occurs on other planets that have no magnetic field such as mercury.

Re:Earths shielding?

[jupiter909]

I don't really mind how many often the Sun's field flips. The Suns own field per se has little to do with my question in this case, it is the solar wind that is constantly bombarding us that is the matter, regardless of it's intensity. They are saying that the Earths field is getting weaker and weaker till a point where it is almost gone, added to that they say there is the chance it might flip. During this flip, if the fields pole is facing the Sun it offers us little to no protection.

"No need to fret?" Like hell.

[gblues]

Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!

Sure, no need to fret. It's not like we haven't invested hundreds of years worth of technology and research based on magnetic reference points. Oh, wait...

Nathan

Re:"No need to fret?" Like hell.

[CdXiminez]

Well, the good thing is that a lot of our navigation is now GPS-based, which is independent of the magnetic north.
The bad thing is that there is a backup if the GPS-link fails on every ship and airplane: a plain compass...

Re:"No need to fret?" Like hell.

[arodland]

I think you mean, GPS, a compass, and a gyrocompass.

Re:"No need to fret?" Like hell.

[ceoyoyo]

And a dude with eyes who knows at least a couple of stars. Don't forget him.

It's just...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just the Earth's way of trying to degauss itself ... just not doing a very good job of it so far!

Re:It's just...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it give a galatic Booooiing sound too?

Re:It's just...

[MustardMan]

I read that as "Wii it give a galactic booooing sound"

I was thinking WTF does Mario Galaxy have to do with the earth's magnetic field?

Re:It's just...

[ocelotbob]

It's doing a pretty good job. Degaussing takes a second, and things go all wonky during that time. 2000-3000 years is nothing on a geological scale.

Re:It's just...

[wkitchen]

It's just the Earth's way of trying to degauss itself ... just not doing a very good job of it so far!

Hey! What does this button do?

Accenture is building up a Center of Competency

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to fixing compass housings, their consultants will conduct seminars such as "Nascar - the new Baseball".

Whoa there

[Anonymous Coward]

SPF my ass.

No sir, you can put your own suncream on your ass.

No, this will fix them.

[jspoon]

Compasses are broken now. The north pole of a magnet should point toward the south pole of the planet and vise-versa.

Sombody think of the birds!

[palmnet]

I was allways taught that birds fly south in winder, relying on the magnetic field of the earth to guid them. So when it swaps, will they go The wrong way? Or was the information told to me just made-up?

Re:Sombody think of the birds!

[834r9394557r011]

perhaps they use the line of the magnetic field, the north -south/south-north direction as apposed to an east-wes/west-east direction , to avoid flying 400 miles to the east and dying in the ocean. it may not have anyhting to do necessarily with the polarity.

Commercials

[ericartman]

How long till the first infomercial offering "Kits" to protect us from the upcoming polar reversal?

Re:Commercials

[fbjon]

I guess everyone will walk around in Faraday cages to protect them from the harmful reversed magnetic flux.

Re:Commercials

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Probably 1,950 years or so.

Re:Commercials

[kfg]

http://survive2012.com/why_2012.php

Avoid the rush. Buy now.

KFG

sweet..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes !! Auroras will be all over the place for a while, I so envy the future citizens.. There will be multiple north and south poles around the globe during the reversal. The magnetic field is not going to cancel itself out and will retain it's strenght relatively during the process. Anything drastically life threatening is not going happen if you are prepared, and there's time.. Interesting question is, what happens to the Schumann resonances in the magnetic field ? At the moment our brainwave frequencies correlate with the Schumann resonance frequencies, but what if the resonances differ after the reversal, will the people born after that be tuned differently ?

Have you seen maps from 1590?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to those maps, the world was a different shape, and had huge monsters in the oceans.

Re:Have you seen maps from 1590?

[Yst]

Indeed, one is compelled, in comparing modern and pre-modern maps, to suspect that the addition of all that planet that wasn't there before and the decline of seamonster populations have had a substantial influence on the magnetic field of the earth.

Re:Have you seen maps from 1590?

[ceoyoyo]

The interiors of continents, and coastlines that weren't visited by reliable navigators were off, but navigation was pretty reliable. It's just that they had to make a lot of guesses about what things were like where they didn't actually go.

2000 years is a loooong time

[Anonymous Coward]

All you people that are freaking out about our dependence on magnetism with current technology, consider where we were 2000 years ago. Now consider how much more advanced we'll be in another 2000 years, if we don't kill ourselves off. I think we'll probably be able to handle the magnetic poles shifting in 2000 years.

Re:2000 years is a loooong time

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope so. It'd suck if all the computers stopped working just as Duke Nukem Forever came out.

Portable

[karlan]

I write my programs to run on Unix and Windows. And they of course never have a bias when it comes to the polarity of the earth, I just switch the polarity bit. Duh,,,

Re:Portable

[lasindi]

I write my programs to run on Unix and Windows. And they of course never have a bias when it comes to the polarity of the earth, I just switch the polarity bit.

Um ... what the heck does the Earth's magnetic field have to do with Unix/Windows programming??

Do Over

[Doc Ruby]

Why would I fret over returning to the state of civilization 780,000 years ago?

Re:Do Over

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it will be way too advanced for a 'tard like you to understand?

Re:Do Over

[Doc Ruby]

Stop wasting your time with Anonymous retard Coward flames and get back to the anonymous TrollMods you waste your time with.

Cause for concern

[cmeans]

I think it's safe to say that everyone that was alive during the last reversal, is dead now.

I find it hard to believe that we shouldn't be concerned.

Re:Cause for concern

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you inferring that we should be worried because the people from the last reversal didn't survive? Survive for 750,000 years? :P

Re:Cause for concern

[HermanAB]

"everyone that was alive during the last reversal, is dead now." Well, damn, that just shows you how dangerous it is... ;)

North will stay the same...

[LinuxRulz]

as long as the toilets in the northern hemisphere still flush clockwise.

Re:North will stay the same...

[john83]

Isn't that famously a myth?

Re:North will stay the same...

[catmistake]

I think maybe you're referring to the Coriolis Effect, and, while I think its probably the water jets that cause a toilet in whatever hemisphere to swirl which ever way it does, in the Northern Hemisphere, cyclones rotate counter-clockwise.

Re:North will stay the same...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, that's it. There's actually a really easy way to see why this happens. Get a globe with it's access mounted on something, and spin it. While it's turning, flip it 180 degrees (so Antarctica is "up"). It's kinda cool...

Re:North will stay the same...

[LinuxRulz]

yes, it is. But that doesn't make it less funny!

Re:North will stay the same...

[cciRRus]

Sorry but this is bullshit. You may wish to read this link and this for more info.

Affect US?

[skayell]

I do not think it's going to affect me personally at all? Why are you worried?

Some One Needs to Inform

[thunderpaws]

"Antenna Web", so there "Compass Orientation" reflects the change in declination.

Need to Take Action Now

[Nom du Keyboard]

there may be a reversal of earth's magnetic field in about 2000 years.

There's clearly a need to take action now. I'd better go clear my calendar, then I'll be prepared.

Memo to Self: Get stick on "N" and "S" labels for compass.

Re:Need to Take Action Now

[DMoylan]

no need for e or w stickers? are they going to stay the same just to confuse us more? :-)

Upcoming?

[Awod]

In 2,000 years? I know the military is bad with times but comeon..

Depends...

[pjt33]

Depends on whether the investors I'm talking to this afternoon buy in or not.

Re:electronic dependence - Monster Cables

[Nom du Keyboard]

I'm using Monster brand cables...

It won't affect you because after you've paid the over-priced tariff for those cables you can't afford electricity at these rapidly rising rates anyway.

Circuit City tried to sell my mother those $70 connectors with her new 37" Sharp TV, along with a $85 Super Surge Protector. Both, she was told, were essential to the full operation of her new television. Fortunately she said no to that, although the TV has HDMI sans HDCP - which they conveniently neglected to mention.

Confused

[cosminn]

Wait, I thought we were going to be living on other planets starting 2001...

On another note, are people that confident we'll still be here in 2000 years?

Re:Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, we'll be here in 2000 years. But apparently not in 2001 years.

Lost in Sea?

[helioquake]

I hope sailors and explorers remember how to use astrolabes and sextants.

Re:Lost in Sea?

[rizzo5]

But why, when we have GPS?

Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[Mr_eX9]

I doubt we'll still be using magnetic storage in 2000 years, but is it at all possible that a switch in the earth's polarity would damage/erase any data stored on a magnetic hard drive anywhere in the world? Anybody know enough about how hard drives work to provide an answer?

Re:Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[Anonymous Coward]

You wanted to know how computer hard drives and magnetic storage media will cope with the field reversing?

Well, there is a very easy test you can do. Simply take you computer hard drive or floppy disk, and rotate it by 180 degrees in the horizontal plane. (That's pi radians for you maths people out there!)
Now, notice any difference in the operation? i suggest we all to this at once to ensure that everything we own is compatible with the switch over.

All together now, 1,2,3....

Re:Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[Valdrax]

Clearly it will have a hideous effect on all hard drives, just like the way all your bits fall out when you accidentally rotate your laptop 90 degrees against the polar magnetic flux.

Re:Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[Xtifr]

> is it at all possible that a switch in the earth's polarity would damage/erase any data

No. The Earth's magnetic field is pervasive, but not very strong. And what there is has a negative/disruptive effect on magnetic media in any case. During the Earth's transition period, magnetically-stored data should be more safe, if anything. But probably not enough to measure.

When I worked for a HD company, years ago, we did find that one of our magnetic-layer deposition machines had a very slightly higher failure rate than the others, and that one did happen to be at ninety degrees to the others, and someone once suggested that it might be being affected by geomagnetism, but most of the engineers thought that was nonsense, and it was never investigated further, as far as I know. Frankly, I think it was just a slightly more flaky machine--it was the first one the company had built, IIRC.

Re:Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[ClickOnThis]

The Earth's magnetic field is pervasive, but not very strong.

Right on both counts, but see below.

When I worked for a HD company, years ago, we did find that one of our magnetic-layer deposition machines had a very slightly higher failure rate than the others, and that one did happen to be at ninety degrees to the others, and someone once suggested that it might be being affected by geomagnetism, but most of the engineers thought that was nonsense, and it was never investigated further, as far as I know.

Without knowing anything about the process they were using for deposition of the magnetic layers, I'm going to guess that the magnetic material was vaporized (and thus ionized) in a vacuum. The material was then attracted to the storage surface with an electric field.

Even the weak magnetic field of the earth can produce a measureable force on the charged particles as they move across the vacuum to the depositing surface. The force is given by the Lorentz equation: F = q(E + v x B). Note the magnetic part of the force is proportional to the velocity of the particles and (due to the cross product) their orientation to the magnetic field. If the particles reach a high enough speed in the vacuum, and they travel far enough, this becomes an issue that one can't ignore. So the orientation of the machines might very well have been a factor in the quality of the depositions they produced.

Frankly, I think it was just a slightly more flaky machine--it was the first one the company had built, IIRC.

It could be that the orientation of the machine was a factor. Or, if it was their first machine, perhaps they didn't think to put diamagnetic shielding around the vacuum chamber and did so for later designs. Anybody who works with charged particles in a laboratory vacuum discovers this sort of thing sooner or later.

Re:Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[dragonbutt]

Maby there is a market for "mag-rev compliant" stickers, buy a few cases of creamed corn and bullets just to be shure.

Re:Adverse effect on magnetic storage?

[ds_job]

I'd say the overall crumbling of society / end of life on earth would have more of an effect than a switch in the polarity. Those Van Allen belts are darn useful and I don't have enough sun cream at the moment.

GPS to stay? Not necessarily.

[emarkp]

As the Earth's magnetic field fluctuates during transition (which we're already seeing), it affects more than the compasses. Our protection from solar radiation substantially decreases as well. Which means that cancers on Earth will go up, but also that satellites will be more likely to fail. So those satellites might just fall out of the sky sooner than you think. Nova had a really good special on the topic a while back, called Magnetic Storm.

Re:electronic dependence - Monster Cables

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, these bastards suck. Sadly my girlfriend recently bought a 'high definition tv' from WalMart. It's made by Philips and has only component input, and no tuner !@!@! wtf !@!@!@ $600 down the drain basically. Yep, no HDMI, DVI, HDCP nothing. Screw you WalMart.

Read the article, please...

[Anonymous Coward]

The article suggests, rather strongly, that most of what we're seeing in the change of the earth's magnetic field is due to something called the "South American Anomaly", and has nothing to do with a possible polar reversal.

What's causing the anomaly?

It's the llama's secret weapon!

X.

Re:Read the article, please...

[Syndaily]

Funny that! Expecting the poles to do a long over due reversal and a magnetic anomaly turns up in the SOUTH pacific. Or could it be that we're extracting all the magnetic materials out of the surface layers of the earth, so exposing lesser fields from the core. 1800's, industrial revolution, coincidence?

Christian fundamentalists

[brian0918]

"The results suggest that there may be a reversal of earth's magnetic field in about 2000 years."

As far as Christian fundamentalists are concerned, I guess this means 4th time's a charm.

How do we know?

[reldruH]

If the last time this was happened was thousands of years ago even though human beings were alive, we weren't using electricity. Who's to say that this won't crash everything plugged into an outlet? We have no data on what it will do to all of our precious computers.

Re:How do we know?

[Xtifr]

> Who's to say that this won't crash everything plugged into an outlet?

Anyone with any sense? Here's a quick experiment you can run. Take one of those devices plugged into an outlet, and turn it 180 degrees. Did it stop working? No? Ok, you should be fine then! :p ;)

Re:How do we know?

[nwbvt]

Actually I'm pretty sure there weren't any human beings alive 780,000 years ago when this last occured. The 'ancestors' that were mentioned were something more along the lines of Homo erectus.

Gravitational Field

[Anonymous Coward]

When will that reverse?

reader grabbing

[suv4x4]

Did you notice how the title speaks about "upcoming" reversal and the article about "reversal in 2000 yr".. I don't know about you, but upcoming for me would mean at least while I'm ALIVE, no?

Re:reader grabbing

[Synn]

I don't know about you, but I plan on living forever.

So far, so good.

Duh

[kurbchekt]

The Earth goes through cycles of this every tens-of-thousnads of years or so. The problem is, it's not always a simple reversal. They've provided comparisons of past changes and estimates of how the future changes could progress: there's holes and poles everywhere. The Discovery channel had a special about the aurora borealis that discusses it in detail, unfortunately, I couldn't find a link...

Re:Duh

[Doc Ruby]

And you wouldn't survive the sabertooth tiger after I pushed you out of the cave, Anonymous troglodyte Coward.

Fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine. Fine. The poles are about to shift. All I want to know is, will my descendents be able to run Linux?

Also: Severe Shortage of Women

[Blakey Rat]

They also suggest a disturbing severe shortage of women, and a high increase in the consumption of 'hardtack.'

I Welcome!

[Tablizer]

Just turn your compass around 180 degrees

I for one welcome our south-facing underlords!

Re:I Welcome!

[IHC Navistar]

Butter-side up, or butter-side down?

-----

God needs to work on his Quality Control.

Re:I Welcome!

[Mr. Slippery]

I for one welcome our south-facing underlords!

In ancient China, compass needles were reckoned to point south. Maps put the south at the top, and the emperor faced south for the feng-shui of it. I wouldn't call him an underlord though, not to his face...

Re:Corruption of the truth!

[Anonymous Coward]

Herro! I am ALEX CHIU. You very smrt. I want you live forever. Prease see my site ALEXCHIU.COM. My rife giving magnets immune to pore reversar. You rive rong time.

Design fault?

[Eljas]

I wonder what ID people say about this particula phenomenon. Probably they'll dismiss it as just another unprovable theory. It's too bad that the process is so slow that I don't think anyone remembers what ID was when the reversal starts to have effect on peoples' everyday life.

Re:Design fault?

[ocelotbob]

Dunno about the "scientific" ID people, but the new world creationists use this as part of the evidence that the world must be less than 10000 years old. The logic goes that this is just more evidence of the descent into chaos, and that the constant dynamo theory is bullshit and that we must all repent.

Santa

[mumblingrepublican]

Does this mean Santa Claus will have to move?

Re:Santa

[all204]

I don't know about Santa Claus, but get ready for the 'Great Penguin Migration' of 4006...

Navigation Concerns Overplayed

[Stormy Dragon]

We're already seeing a rapid shift from geomagnetic references to inertial and satellite references in navigation. 2,000 years from now, it's unlikely magnetic compasses will be anything but a novelty.

Were there magnetic reversals?

[pjdeets2]

I would like to know what evidence there is that there ever was a magnetic reversal. Check out this page from a book by Walt Brown. There is a section about this a little over halfway down the page under the section called Magnetic Variations on the Ocean Floor. I think this is where people come up with the notion of past reversals, but there is no true evidence.

Re:Were there magnetic reversals?

[Anonymous Coward]

The evidence from magnetic reversal is found in ice samples taken from the north and south poles, coincidentally.

Small, magnetic organisms are frozen in the ice, and around every 750,000 years, it is blatently obvious how they'll point north, then randomly, then south, then randomly, then north.

It's pretty hard to disprove.

Re:Were there magnetic reversals?

[frankie]

Interesting my ass. Ever hear of someting called "Google"?

p.s. http://ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/geomag/faqgeom.shtml#q8

Whooho!

[SpaceTaxi]

Maybe now Australia will get the respect it deserves!

Oh no!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Think of all those poor Orienteers, wandering around but never finding the flag...

2000 years, huh? Congress better get to work on this right away - that seems like about the right timeframe for them.

How fast is the reversal change rate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying it would take x-number large of years isn't the important part, the important part is how that change would plot on a graph. Is it linear, small percent a year, nice and steady, or does it have a big flux to it? Maybe the first 3/4's (whatever) of the change goes real slow then WHAM the rest of it goes real fast. gradual linear change, or a geometric change? Article isn't clear, just gives gross and pretty blandly vague time estimates. also, the little quip our ancestors went through it..uhh, 780,000 years ago they went through a complete pole reversal, those weren't really homo sapiens then. They were primates, and I guess technically it fits them being hominids, but nothing like modern man.

When this has happened in the past we were stone age cavemen hominids, and even then I bet it wiped a lot of them out, but with only needing sticks stones and animal bones for "work", they could pick up where they dropped off somewhat easily. With todays technology oriented society, a fast reversal-even over a couple year time frame for the very fast part- would be devastating. And from what I have read, it isn't a 180 degree swap all the time, the north magnetic pole does a lot of wandering too, it floats around like a top spinning, like the magnetic north might wind up in nebraska or something like that for a long time.

Wouldn't that be spee-shul.

* I * won't be here in 2000 years

[Anonymous Coward]

::fretting::

2000 years...?

[daddyrief]

What makes anyone think that the human race will even survive that long? I'm sure World War III will happen long before this does...

y4k bug

[dom1234]

We'll have to learn cobol programming once again

You don't know IDers

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't dismiss it, they'll embrace it: "See, magnetic pole reversals prove intelligent design; no naturally evolved species could survive pole reversals", followed by some B.S. argument about how evolution couldn't produce thus-and-such.

Less strange than fiction

[haelduksf]

There's an excellent novel by N. Lee Wood called Faraday's Orphans set in the apocalyptic aftermath of just such a reversal. Probably inaccurate, but interesting.

What about Africa?

[SIInudeity]

Shweeet. Southern Africa will then have the largest mall in the Northest hemisphere.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you wouldn't be able to talk shit on slashdot...

Moss

[Anonymous Coward]

Which side of the tree will moss grow on now?

It's about time!

[FridayBob]

As far as I'm concerned, I've just about had it with the fact that the geographic north pole is where the magnetic south pole is. It's damned confusing! I say we change things right away: the sooner the poles are in the right place, the better!

whose ancestors?

[tverbeek]

Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!

My ancestors immigrated here during the Mediterranean Bronze Age, you insensitive clod!

Southerners take heart

[Anonymous Coward]

The South shall rise again!

Ah journalist math

[Anonymous Coward]

Decline of 5% per 100 years doesn't mean reversal in 2000 years... Just a halflife of 1350 years.

Quick! Call George Noory..

[Anonymous Coward]

Alert the ever intelligent Richard C. Hoagland! Afterall, he's got an Angstrom Award! He's the smartestest...

The Core

[cowboy76Spain]

I know I am a little late, but to avoid people becoming paranoid because they saw the core, here is a link to a review of the "science" behind the movie (the web refers to it as the worse sci-fi movie in the scientific aspect). [http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html]

Solution: Solar wind is going to create a new MF!

[mha]

I read this story in a German magazine a few days ago (http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltraum/0,151 8,300232,00.html). They pointed to a an article about a study (http://xxx.uni-augsburg.de/abs/astro-ph/0404580) that says simulations of a complete failure of the earths mag. field is going to lead to a complete replacement by a new mag. field - created by the charged particles of the solar wind when they encounter the upper parts of the earths atmposphere. They also point out that this simulation seems credible because nowhere could anyone find any signs of mass extinctions or even mass mutations the many times the earths m.f. reversed so far.

Global Warming

[cmarkn]

The timing of these measurements is interesting, in that the date when the magnetic field began to fall is about the same time as the global temperature began to climb. Although I wouldn't dare suggest a mechanism for the relationship, it appears possible that there is one: and it is even mentioned in the article - as the magnetic field weakens, less solar radiation is deflected. What isn't mentioned is that as more radiation hits Earth, the warmer it gets. This relationship is certainly something worth investigating.

Re:Global Warming

[Anonymous Coward]

No, dude, you're right!. Driving SUVs causes the Earth's magnetic field to collapse!

It's like here in California, we have earthquake weather. That means the weather is causing earthquakes! That's gotta be from Global warming, too!

Gawd. Science is so kewl!!

I for one...

[tlacuache]

I for one welcome our new South Pole Santa Claus overlord.

Lost

[chiok]

Everyone knows that the reason why the poles are reversing is that John Locke stopped pushing the button.

(Click here if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Will the polar reversal...

[JourneyExpertApe]

...cause toilets to flush the other way or something? Oh, it's ship logs. Nevermind.

You People of Earth are IDIOTS!

[Quinn]

Yet another example of the coming global SUPERSTORM! How much longer can we rape the planet with impugnity and expect no wrath from Mother Gaea? Our dependance on foreign oil, the use of disposable diapers, the gas-guzzling SUV culture of Daemon America, and the dreaded Emperor Bush eroding our privacy and stroking the wank of big business -- what do you expect, you silly stupid people? Why are you even here? Go home. Leave the Earth in peace as it was intended, fecund and glorious in its barren isolation.

Re:GPS to stay? Not necessarily.

[Ucklak]

No, you have it all wrong. Al Gore says it's global warming and it's all the US' fault. Cereal.

Nature needs YOU

[jamesh]

Nature needs YOUR help to reverse the polar reversal that has already begun.

How can you help?

Break open everything with a magnet. Cut it in half. Send the 'North Pole' half* up to the North Pole, and the 'South Pole' half* down to the South Pole. Shipments will be run every six months. Between shipments, you can help by making sure you store the magnets aligned in a north and south direction.

And be vigilant. Already three terrorist attempts to drop the South Pole magnet halves at the North Pole have been thwarted, and 5 warehouses have been found with magnets aligned in the wrong direction. If you suspect anyone of aligning their magnets the wrong way, call the Magnet Misalignment hotline NOW.

(* I do know that if you cut a magnet in half you don't get a north pole half and a south pole half. I'm just being silly.)

Only off by a factor of 1000..

[Vellmont]

The last magnetic reversal was 780 thousand years ago, not 780 million. This was the era of homo-erectus, which was fairly human like.

Ham Radio - HF Propagation

[Marcos Eliziario]

I was wondering how this would affect ham radio on the bands that use ionospheric propagation.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:long term effects [Pigeon Racing!]

[Anonymous Coward]

The important thing here is what impact this will have on the sport of pigeon racing.
Pigeons already have enough difficulties with all of the wires, cables, cell phone tower radiation, etc.

Thanks For the Heads-Up, guys!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be sure to write the mods for this into my navigation software ASAP. Should take me no more than a few days to fully test.

What about hikers?

[ipfwadm]

The stars, with even a rudimentary timepiece, are sufficient to provide a good guide to general direction. Before compasses ever existed, navigation was done based on them.

All the people replying "just use the stars" (and there are a lot of them) are missing the point. Compasses aren't just used by people trying to get across the ocean. Compasses are also used by hikers, kayakers, etc. In short, people with a specific destination who can't afford to wait for night (and a clear one at that) to determine what direction north is. And also people who don't have access to reliable, constant power to run a GPS all day for a week straight. Further, GPS is useless in certain terrain due to lack of line-of-sight to enough satellites, or multi-path error. In short, lack of compass use will be a MAJOR hurdle to safe, efficient navigation for many people.

Re:What about hikers?

[Mostly a lurker]

I concede that there may (rarely) be a problem for someone on foot. Assuming the hiker has good maps and knows how to read them, this really only applies when travelling over featureless terrain on a cloudy night. In daytime, even when overcast, it is usually possible to figure out the position of the sun.

Re:What about hikers?

[ipfwadm]

Rarely, huh? First, all terrain is featureless when you're in the woods. If you don't think so, try hiking in thicker woods. In the northeast at least, visibility to surrounding terrain features that are significant enough to show up on a map (i.e. something bigger than that boulder next to you) is often zero.

Second, to what accuracy are you determining the location of the sun on a thick overcast (or worse, rainy) day? To within ten, twenty, or thirty degrees, if at all? Sorry, not good enough for the navigation I'm interested in. And such overcast days tend to happen a lot in my part of the world.

Third, you have clearly never kayaked on the ocean if you don't think that will be a problem. Think thick fog obscuring the sun and all landmarks, and sea conditions so bad that taking a hand off the paddle for even a moment can result in a capsize. Even hand-held compasses are useless in such conditions; sea kayakers use a deck-mounted marine compass that attaches on the front of the boat so you can just look down and see your heading. And yes, I've personally been in such conditions.

Re:What about hikers?

[paraax]

Our current level of technology is enough to handle any situation that you have pointed out. You could probably manage a GPS unit which could be powered briefly by human means (crank system, or other) and you can locally augment GPS in general where you have line of site issues. Spelunking would present some challenges...

It seems like while it might become more difficult, we could deal with this within a generation if it happened today. (Certainly there would be a transition period in which we'd lose a few sea kayakers... but those who take up a sport are generally aware of the risks.) If we as a people fall into another dark-age... well, we have more problems than just getting places... but certainly for those routes that need to be traveled there will be a low tech way.

Ancestrial Reversals

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, who knows what the reversals do, or when they will 'really' come about. There is no need to fret cause I have a mortgage, kids to feed, tuition to pay, vacations, insurance and other issues that are a far cry higher priority than the possibility of a polar reversal or field weakening of the Earth. Sorry, but this story just doesn't matter to the /. reader like me.

So?

[msauve]

"Neither of those will tell you which way you're pointing."

That's what gyroscopes are for.

While compasses and sextants may always be useful as simple backups to complex electro/mechanical systems, they have their own failure modes - local magnetic anomalies, overcast weather, etc. For reliable navigation, it will always be necessary to have multiple systems which don't share common dependencies.

Yes we survived

[Danathar]

But the real question is what percentage of people DIED!

Re:Yes we survived

[fahrbot-bot]

But the real question is what percentage of people DIED!

Technically... All of them.

In scientific terms, the percentage of the surviving population from any one event approaches zero as time approaches infinity. Wait, I've got a graph here somewhere...

EXCELSIOR!!

[Slithe]

No, Global Warming is not the US's fault, it's Man-Bear-Pig's fault. I'm being cereal this time.

well

[argStyopa]

Also worth noting, our ancestors have lived through a number of polar reversals, and we're still here, so no need to fret!

We've also lived through much warmer temperatures (& much colder, for that matter) - that doesn't make Greenpeace/Al Gore/EnviroChickens STFU, does it?

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

When you look at the science (I know, "facts are stupid things") and see how these warmer and colder temperatures to which you refer took thousands of years to come on, then compare that to how the recent warming is taking something like a hundred years, most reasonably educated people would find that very interesting and worrisome.

On the other hand, I suppose when you learn your science from nationally syndicated talk show hosts and state-sponsored syndicated newspaper columnists and outlets, it doesn't sound so bad.

I encourage you not to just accept the critical scientific analysis of these political pundits, as I am sure they are well qualified to do this, but to keep open the inquisitive mind and go and study the works of the scientists themselves. I must warn you, however, that you'll have a tough row to hoe seeing as how these scientists are actively kept from the press and talking about their climate research (for their own protection, I assume, because if the terrorists get to the scientists, the terrorists win (and then who would think of the children, so we had better let the intelligence agencies monitor the activities of these scientists, for their own protection)).

Re:GPS to stay? Not necessarily.

[Manhigh]

I'm not arguing they may be more suseptable, but I hope your "fall from the sky" quote is figurative.

GPS satellites are in 12 hour orbits, high enough that they probably wont EVER fall from the sky, save a conservative guess of a few millenia.

Dead satellites keep orbiting. Every geostationary bird is still up there. The one caveat is there are a few "graveyards" where the gravitational field of the earth makes them less suseptable to longitudinal drift. Most of these birds are moved to the 'graveyards' when theyre almost out of propellant, to keep them from interfering with new birds and to keep the geostationary slots relatively clear.

I'm not aware of any plans to keep Medium-Earth-Orbit (MEO) satellites like the GPS birds in disposal orbits after their useful lifespans.

GPS can't substitute for compass/mapread/deadrecon

[RockyMountain]

While I doubt mariners will ever stop being taught compass and celestial navigation (tradition is important), I can't imagine either will be needed 100 years from now, much less a thousand.

Ok, so my gig is aviation, not marination (is that a word?!). But the principles are the same, and I'll say this with certainty: I'd give up every other navigational aid before I'd give up my magnetic compass. I'll happily fly without a GPS, without VORs and NDBs, without Loran. And it's NOT just about tradition. There's a very fundamental reason why a compass will _always_ be the primary navigational aid.

The magnetic compass is SIMPLE, and it is RELIABLE. A permanent magnet suspended in fluid. Probability of inflight failure: just about zero. I've lost radios in flight. I've had antennas get damaged. I've had electrical shorts, and alternators die, stopwatch jam, gyros tumble, I've even lost a map overboard. But I've _never_ had a sudden magnetic compass failure. Sure, they fail gradually over the space of months, usually due to gradual magnetisation of nearby metal, but that can easily be dealt with. They don't just suddenly let you down.

Compass, map, and dead reconing will always be the principal navigational skills, or at least the primary fallback.

(Oh, and compass also tells you things that GPS doesn't. Like your heading. GPS can tell you your track, but not your heading.)

Re:electronic dependence - Monster Cables

[PeelBoy]

You've got to be fucking kidding me. Your girlfriend bought an HDTV from WalMart?!

GPS disabling for "national security"

[lpq]

"Unless those statellites fall out of the sky, GPS is here to stay." ...

Uh, how about until the government decides that GPS data needs to be kept private due to "national security" concerns? ;^

On Soviet Mars....

[kiwipom]

... the magnetic poles reverse the planet ;-)

Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

I once heard that the space shuttle had GPS at both ends as a means of determining attitude as well as position.

Boys in Grey

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Johhy Reb is going to take kindly to being called a penguin.

Clocks and Compasses

[elhaf]

Compasses far predate clocks. The first compass made a copule of hundred years B.C. The first clock that was usable for navigation (solving the longitude problem) was made in the early 1700's. This made widespread colonization possible, because regular trips could be made.

Re:GPS can't substitute for compass/mapread/deadre

[whimmel]

marination (is that a word?!)

yes it is! Lawry's makes it easy and fast to add a distinct flavor to meats after only 30 minutes of marination.

This is impossible!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read through this entire discussion and *nobody* has tried to blame this on George Bush! What's happened to Slashdot?

Re:electronic dependence - Monster Cables

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got to be fucking kidding me. You have a girlfriend?

Additionally

[Malakusen]

A lot of re-entering satellites would most likely burn up in the atmosphere. Those that don't, well, the Earth is 70% water and no satellite up there would be large enough or hitting atmo with enough force to hit with enough energy to be a severe problem, unless it lands on your head or your house. Not something I'd sweat, I'd sweat the shifting of the magnetic fields a lot more.

A clear solution

[Malakusen]

Clearly you need to stay indoors more. Problem solved! Also, IANAS, but I'm guessing staying indoors will provide limited protection from the solar radiation plowing through the atmosphere if the poles shift.

Radiation is a lousy word

[raygundan]

We're not talking about the deflection of plain old sunlight radiation, like visible light, IR, and UV-- we're talking about "hard" radiation in the solar wind, made from high-energy charged particles. (electrons and protons, etc...)

This may still produce some heat on collision, I'm not sure. But it's not the same as "more sunlight."

Re:Solution: Solar wind is going to create a new M

[captainClassLoader]

Solar wind is going to create MILFs? Cool!

Oh, whoops, guess I should've RTFC. Never mind...

Actually, nope, I'm not confusing them...

[Jaqui]

during the switch of the magnetic field, which takes at least 1000 years to complete, there are frequent temporary stabilisations, often local in area [ like hawaii is stable with the current direction, midway is stable with the opposite ]

This creates a record in the rocks [ lava flows during the switch ] created during the process that shows total duration and number of switches overall, in the last 15,000 years the magnetic field as evidenced in the rocks in hawaiian lava flows, has switched on average once every 150 years. there is a sequence of field changes that date to less than 30 years, from around 500 years ago, the geologists researching the area stated that this sequence was for a period of 30 years, and showed 45 field polarity switches.