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Dispelling Myths About Geomagnetic Reversal
UniverseToday has an interesting look at geomagnetic reversal, the process in which the Earth's magnetic poles trade places. The article cites known trends and recent studies to debunk doomsday myths and unsubstantiated claims about the process. One such study is attempting to model the earth's core with a 26-ton ball of molten metal. Another recently found evidence that the Earth has a second, weaker magnetic field. "We do know that this magnetic pole flip-flop has occurred many times in the last few million years; the last occurred 780,000 years ago according to ferromagnetic sediment. A few scaremongering articles have said geomagnetic reversal occurs with 'clockwork regularity' — this is simply not true."
Doesn't rotating the device 180 degrees have the same effect? If it takes you 0.5 sec to turn a North-facing iPod into a South-facing iPod and it doesn't break it, just how fast a geomagnetic reversal do you have in mind?
Without GPS, our airliners will also plough into the ground
Goddamit man, we can't land without GPS!
Good thing Lindberg had GPS, otherwise he would've gotten lost like Earhart did when her GPS failed.
GPS approaches are actually relatively new and are just now in the past few years showing up on modern Jeppsen charts.
That being said, modern GPS based navigation is so sweet. Nothing is sweeter than jumping into a plane with a G1000 GPS based system, complete with XM weather and traffic warning systems and seeing it all on configurable glass panels. But if it fails there is always backup "classic" gauges one can use. And even if that fails there is ye olde grey matter.
That's the damn point: it isn't a cataclysm. It's been turned into one by a bunch of pseudoscientists to sell alarmist books and idiotic, overdramatized programs to the Discovery Channel. At most it might give us some spectacular aurora at low latitudes, increase cosmic rays at the surface by a measurable but biologically insignificant amount, mess up compasses and maybe a few satellites, and cause some geese and pigeons to fly in the wrong direction for a while.
The only true cataclysm here is that people can make a decent living selling this kind of crap, but I suppose that's nothing new. In the 1910s some people thought Halley's comet was going to poison the Earth because deadly gases were found spectroscopically in its tail, and the Earth was going to pass through it. Imaginative business people sold gas masks and "anti-comet pills". Same idea, only this time it's "geomagnetic reversals".