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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!
Retroactive due to Global Warming, I bet!
This one's a no-brainer guys.
Just turn your compass around 180 degrees, then it'll be pointing South instead of North.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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?
If this slow reversal is happening as we speak; what effect could it have on bird migration and magnetotactic bacteria?
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!
...faces when they return to the shop to complain about their compasses showing the wrong direction.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
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?
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.
Mad, adj : Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Ambrose Bierce - The Deveil's Dictionsary
I hear the penguins call it the War of Northern Aggression.
Touched By His Noodley Appendage.
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.
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
It's just the Earth's way of trying to degauss itself ... just not doing a very good job of it so far!
How long till the first infomercial offering "Kits" to protect us from the upcoming polar reversal?
According to those maps, the world was a different shape, and had huge monsters in the oceans.
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
liqbase
I find it hard to believe that we shouldn't be concerned.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
as long as the toilets in the northern hemisphere still flush clockwise.
I do not think it's going to affect me personally at all? Why are you worried?
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.
w00t
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
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....
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Does this mean Santa Claus will have to move?
If it can't be done wrong... it can't be done.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Shweeet. Southern Africa will then have the largest mall in the Northest hemisphere.
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!
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.
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.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
And you wouldn't survive the sabertooth tiger after I pushed you out of the cave, Anonymous troglodyte Coward.
--
make install -not war
But the real question is what percentage of people DIED!