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

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.