
Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon? - wglb
https://www.space.com/43173-earth-magnetic-field-flips-when.html
======
mrspeaker
"While any magnetic-field flip would still be thousands of years away...".
Sneaky sentence right at the end. Sure the last one happened 700,000 years
ago, so it is "soon", the but article made it sound like it was happening
tomorrow!

~~~
lb1lf
Discussing an unstable mountainous area with a geologist once, he made it
sound like collapse was imminent, so I asked him when to expect it. "Oh, any
day, now - definitely in the next 50,000 years or so..."

~~~
magduf
That's the problem with geology like that: the collapse really could happen
next week, or not for another 10,000 years.

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njarboe
Articles on the fear of the Earth's field flipping are, as expected, not very
realistic. The best current knowledge is that it takes thousands of years for
the field to flip and the current fluctuations are within normal bounds. The
wikipedia article on the Earth's magnetic field[1] is pretty good. See
relevant quote from it below. Scientists recently updated the standard
Gaussian coefficients used to describe the Earth's field a bit earlier than
the usual 10 year adjustment. This is because the field has changed a bit
quicker than the recent past and people are more interested in having a high
accurate model these days, among other reasons. The release of this new model
is why these kinds of stories are in the news at the moment.

The Earth's magnetic field is created mostly by the convecting liquid
iron/nickel outer core of the Earth. It is a quite turbulent system and can
not be modeled very well for numerous reasons. Here are a few:

The pressure and temperature is so high that depth (2900-5100km below the
surface) in the Earth that is impossible to create similar conditions on the
Earth's surface for more that milliseconds on milligram samples. The only
measurements that can be made of the core are from seismic waves passing
through thousands of kilometers of the heterogeneous Earth. We have decent
measurements for the Earth's magnetic field only since people have been
recording compass readings (1600AD or so) and really good global measurements
only since satellite readings starting in the 1960's. IAAPM (I am a
paleomagnetist)[2] and am happy to answer questions about this topic.

"At present, the overall geomagnetic field is becoming weaker; the present
strong deterioration corresponds to a 10–15% decline over the last 150 years
and has accelerated in the past several years; geomagnetic intensity has
declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value
achieved approximately 2,000 years ago. The rate of decrease and the current
strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of
past magnetic fields recorded in rocks."

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field)

~~~
Pharmakon
When you say the pressure conditions can be recreated for milliseconds, is
this using a diamond anvil or some other technique? Beyond that, I just wanted
to thank you for this post, and your reply to someone else higher up in the
thread. Reading the views of subject matter experts is what drew me here in
the first place.

~~~
njarboe
Diamond anvil tech is just advancing into the realm where the pressure of the
surface of the outer core can be held for long enough for chemical reactions
to reach equilibrium. That is, to be highly useful to see what might be
happening in the core. Heating up to high temperatures at the same time is an
added difficulty and can only be done for a shorter time periods. I'm not an
expert on diamond anvils, but follow the advancements some. It is how we are
going to actually get a good idea of the possibilities of what goes on in the
deep Earth. It would be really cool if humans decided to try and tunnel the
3000km to the core so we could sample it directly and be able to do long
timescale experiments on bulk samples. I don't think physics fundamentally
prohibits such a thing.

By short time I mean that some physical properties of matter at high
temperatures and pressures can be determined by observing high velocity
collisions or explosions, but these are short lived phenomena. A lot of effort
has been spent on experiments like this for understanding how nuclear bombs
behave. Some of those experiments help inform, say, the properties of iron
under high temp and pressure and have been declassified so us mere Earth
scientists can learn about it.

~~~
Pharmakon
Thanks for the detailed answer. Can you recommend any good publications, books
or blogs that relate to this subject?

~~~
njarboe
I don't know your background, so it is hard to know what to recommend. If you
have a PhD in a subject area then in theory you should have enough general
knowledge to be able to effectively read a recent review article explaining
the state of the art in some sub-discipline. I can then use the references in
that paper to read about the concepts and ideas I am not familiar with and I
think are important to understand.

Using google scholar (not regular google), I found this recent article
"Contributed Review: Culet diameter and the achievable pressure of a diamond
anvil cell: Implications for the upper pressure limit of a diamond anvil cell"
[https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5049720](https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5049720)

I would read this to update my ideas about what diamond anvil cells can do
right now.

Then, if I wanted to actually use one or find out if I should use one, I would
talk with one of the authors of a paper referenced in the review paper that I
thought was good and dealt with the particular reason I wanted to use one.

That was a bit long winded. Hope it helped.

~~~
Pharmakon
That was great, not long-winded. That paper is a great starting place, and I
can’t thank you enough for your posts. Have a great weekend!

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atulatul
A few trivia items from the BBC QI elves:

"Jupiter’s magnetic field has two south poles."

"Roughly every 11 years, the magnetic field of the sun reverses, north becomes
south, and south becomes north. The same thing happens on Earth, but only
about once every 300,000 years."

"The magnetic North Pole is moving about 55km per year at the moment. Last
year it wandered over the international dateline and ended up in the Eastern
hemisphere."

[https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1082639057556029443](https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1082639057556029443)

[https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1043545462186356737](https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1043545462186356737)

[https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1085145132591124481](https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1085145132591124481)

~~~
mr_toad
The Sun has multiple magnetic poles that are in constant flux.

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justaman
I wanted to share one of my favorite sites:
[https://www.pssurvival.com/](https://www.pssurvival.com/) Pole shifts are
popular among "preppers" which in my opinion tend to be quite eccentric.
However this website is full of great information that we often take for
granted.

~~~
isostatic
I have no idea what that site is, but this is the introduction:

This is a shift of the earth's crust with respect to the earth's core
generated north and south magnetic poles. Earth's magnetic poles are created
by the flow of ions in the earth's core and is somewhat closely aligned to be
parallel to the axis of rotation. We expect about 90 degree shift of the crust
as planet-X passes earth's orbit on its way through our solar system. The new
North Pole will be off the coast of Brazil and the new South Pole is off the
coast of India. It is associated with lots of other earth changes before,
during and after the pole shift. See the following description for more
details.

~~~
justaman
Yeah whoever made this site is bat-shit crazy. But there is tons of great
information here. Anything from making soap the old fashioned way to brushed
and brushless DC motors. Its really cool and wouldn't be the worst thing to
have printed off and saved in a fallout shelter.

~~~
imglorp
I've always thought it might be cool to package up a bunch of literature on a
stack of SD cards and package them with a low power e-ink reader and a solar
panel to charge it, then market as a "reboot civilization" kit.

The hardest part is actually finding a generic e-ink reader with an sd card
slot that doesn't cost $500. It shouldn't need to run full android, just show
a PDF or TXT, that's all it needs to do.

An offline wikipedia dump, emergency medical manual and PDR, survival manuals,
etc etc like this site might go well.

~~~
kybernetikos
[http://thewikireader.com/](http://thewikireader.com/) update:
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-distribute-
wikireade...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-distribute-wikireaders-
and-provide-an-opportunity-for-kids-to-learn#/updates/all)

I don't have one - my phone contains an offline wikipedia dump (including
images), offline maps of the world including geological maps, medical manual,
and my book collection, including things like [http://the-knowledge.org/en-
gb/](http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/).

I've got a vague plan to download the primitive technology youtube videos too.

~~~
isostatic
So once "the end" comes, you'll be set for a good 4 hours before your phone
runs out of battery?

~~~
irrational
You could recharge your phone using sticks
([https://www.rei.com/product/115523/biolite-wood-burning-
camp...](https://www.rei.com/product/115523/biolite-wood-burning-
campstove-2-with-flexlight)) or a solar panel.

~~~
goda90
I wonder what the longevity of something like that is. And for solar panels
what do you do if it's a supervolcano that blocks out the sun? The real
solution is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator which will give you a few
hundred watts for decades. But I don't think they sell those online...

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coding123
I'm guessing it's actually in progress, we just won't know it for 100 years

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lenticular
As it says in the article, we don't have anything to fear at the surface.
Reversals have never been associated with increased extinction. When the field
does reverse, it becomes increasingly disordered with higher-order moments
dominating. If I recall, the dipole moment of Earth's magnetic field is
normally over 90% of the strength. The higher-order moments dissipate faster,
so it doesn't reach as far into space.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Given there are lots of species that use the Earth's magnetic field for
navigation this is highly surprising. Perhaps there have been mass extinctions
but they're not readily found, or our timings are wrong so they don't appear
synchronised?

I wonder if there wouldn't be more seismic activity?

~~~
njarboe
The magnetic field also gets very weak (90% drop in intensity and the magnetic
pole way down near the equator) quite often. These are call magnetic
excursions. They happen at an average frequency of maybe 50 thousand years or
so with a high variance. The last big one is called the Las Champ excursion
and happened about 41 thousand year ago. Species that needed a strong magnetic
field that points north or south to exist would have gone extinct long ago.
These species must have ways to survive when the Earth's magnetic field is
unstable and weak because that happens on timescales much shorter than species
evolution.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event)

~~~
lenticular
That's interesting. Magnetic reversals actually take some time to complete (a
few thousand years). If it changes slowly enough, if animals navigate through
a learned magnetic field rather than genetic instinct, they'd do fine.

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f3r3nc
No way to download all? Going through one by one, it might be too late already

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onetimemanytime
_> >Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?_

Yes. _then proceeds to define "soon"_

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samdung
Interesting (and possibly related) article about the four yugas in hindu
mythology. [https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/science-behind-hindu-s-
four...](https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/science-behind-hindu-s-four-ages-
chatur-yugas-magnetogeddon-may-destroy-the-world)

~~~
qwerty456127
It says {Forbidden}. Any alternative location?

~~~
jblz
Here's a mirror:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160530234212/https://www.speak...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160530234212/https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/science-
behind-hindu-s-four-ages-chatur-yugas-magnetogeddon-may-destroy-the-world)

Original link worked for me, fwiw.

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qwerty456127
So where it is now? In Siberia?

~~~
theandrewbailey
Between Siberia and Canada.

[https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/](https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/)
(switch view to Arctic)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole#Modern_(po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole#Modern_\(post-1996\))

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raducu
Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can
be answered by the word no."

~~~
isostatic
Does Betteridge's law always apply?

~~~
davidkuhta
Hat tip to the other two posters for providing serious responses.

If you intended that as a light-hearted witty response (as I believe you did),
then you got a chuckle out of me.

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tamaharbor
So should I buy or sell compass-related stocks?

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wilkskyes
Is it true that when the magnetic field flips suddenly, plane autopilot
systems can become confused and crash out of the skies, killing millions en
mass?

~~~
adrianN
That would be surprising as the altitude control should be independent from
the compass. I'd also wager that more than just the compass is used to
determine course. Most likely a sanity check in the control software will kick
in and return control to the pilot, just as if the compass(es) broke for some
reason during flight.

~~~
rory096
Primary heading indication is the directional gyro[0] anyway.

And magnetic flips don't happen "suddenly" in the timescale of a plane flight.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heading_indicator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heading_indicator)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
How fast are the flips. I've known about this effect for maybe a couple of
decades, but never heard any theories on how fast the flip is.

If the flip is really slow, then that seems to lead to less human catastrophe,
but more difficult perhaps for other species?

edit: s/far/fast

~~~
adrianN
The problem with the flips is that they go hand-in-hand with a dramatic
weakening of the magnetic field until the new orientation is established.
During that time solar storms are not deflected as well and vulnerable
electronics will be fried.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
If my new tv gets fried during the apocalypse I'm going to be pissed.

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outsidetheparty
Betteridge's law of headlines applies (though it takes fourteen paragraphs to
get there....)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

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tamaharbor
Is this field flipping man made? Let’s spend billions of tax dollars in an
attempt to stop the field from flipping. Scientists are always correct.

~~~
craftyguy
> Is this field flipping man made?

No.

> Let’s spend billions of tax dollars in an attempt to stop the field from
> flipping.

What?

> Scientists are always correct.

No actual scientists are arguing that it is man made...

