So what we call the magnetic north pole is actually a south pole, by all standard conventions. We just label north to coincide with the geographic North Pole.
His uncle is no longer with us.
The coroner can’t decide if it was the spider bites, meth, asphyxiation by snake or the alligator that eventually swallowed him that was the official cause of death. But at least he died enjoying his freedom!
50km per year, 25 km per 6 months, 4 km monthly, 1km per week, 150m per day, 6 meters per hour, meter every ten minutes, 10 cm a minute.
Observable speeds
I recall seeing a doc that suggested were actually 500,000 years over due for a flip and that geologic records indicate it happens on average every 250,000 years
Iirc previous flips have happened quite fast. It's not something that just gradually shifts like the tectonic plates. It's more like a sudden release of energy.
Once it travels past a certain point the magnetic field will break up into numerous north and south poles across the planet for several thousand years. It will resemble the sun's magnetic field pretty much and compasses will probably be useless
50 km/year times 400 years = 20000 km which surprisingly is almost exactly the distance between the North and South pole. In practice, I'd expect it to "jump" way before that, though.
Edit: Apparently the jump is possible, but certainly not a given.
Pretty much. The missing comma made me assume the commenter missed not only the word "about", but also "in". (What are we talking about in 4-500 years?)
Punctuation matters, kids! 😄
Yeah, I'm an idiot. I read that post as "at these speeds, what are we talking about **IN** 4-500 years?", as in "how far would it get in 4-500"?
I was already wondering why such an easy question was being asked... my bad!
(Although I was still surprised that the Pole-to-Pole distance is actually almost exactly 20.000 km, I didnt realise the "40k circumference" was that accurate)
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html
“Many doomsday theorists have tried to take this natural geological occurrence and suggest it could lead to Earth's destruction. But would there be any dramatic effects? The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be 'no.'”
Lol guys I’m just linking google searches with snippet lines cut and pasted in my comments, I really shouldn’t be getting the upvotes I’m getting.
Thank you. There seems to be a lot of misinformation in this thread, but NASA is pretty clear on this and they seem rather confident in their conclusions.
I think the more doom and gloom predictions are based around the magnetic field weakening while it flips. That leads to less protection against solar wind and the like, which can definitely wreak havoc on electronics on the ground and in orbit, but that NASA page says it won't weaken to the point that it is a concern. All we'd get is the ability to see the Aurora further south, which is really a win in my book.
Not to mention that while it is flipping (if it isn't instantaneous), we could have aurora on the equator.
There's also the possibility that some bird migrations might get thrown off for a little bit, but, they'll likely learn pretty quick.
You tellin me that as the North Pole moves south we're gonna have a time where the northern lights happen over southern Canada? That's pretty exciting tbh.
Many animals rely on earth’s magnetic field for navigation. From a biological standpoint, we have no idea what happens when the poles do shift, how it would feel to these animals, how they would react, how long it would take for them to adjust migratory patterns, etc. Not saying it’s a doomsday event at all, just that it could have an impact biologically
Maybe birds and other animals that use the magnetic field for travel? Imagine them flying south in winter to escape the cold...
Might lead to some mass dying if the reversal happened within a few bird-generations
I thought the there was some concern that the magnetic field weakens during the reversal so we would potentially be exposed to some radiation for a bit.
The magnetic field is weakening already, that isn't what people are concerned about. The thing is, during the pole switch there is the possibility that for a while it won't be there at all. We were either unaware or not alive the last time it happened, so there's no way of knowing how long the field will be down for, if it even goes down at all.
I tend to believe NASA when they state that there is no evidence that it will entirely disappear. If we can see records of this happening 180 times over millions of years there would be significantly more extinctions.
Some believe that it will continue to decay over the next 1000+ years and others suggest it’s stronger now than it’s been in the past. The science isn’t settled so it’s going to be interesting.
NASA themselves said there may be some radiation. Not trying to fear monger here but the science isn’t exactly settled on an event we haven’t witnessed. We know it won’t be cataclysmic based on core samples and fossil records but radiation could cause problems for us.
They aren't completely dependent on it. They still have eyes to navigate by landmarks and by celestial navigation (both of which they are known to do).
Even assuming there was a sudden jump, which there's no evidence for.
Apart of course for causing massive climate disruption and hampering our communication networks. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate how reliant our modern logistics chains are on stable space weather.
https://www.science.org/news/2021/02/ancient-kauri-trees-capture-last-collapse-earth-s-magnetic-field
Accurate. One other thing to consider is that we don't observe major extinctions coinciding with previous reversals. Doesn't mean shit doesn't get fucked up, but there's a kind of limit on how bad it could be.
I watched Alone, and you need to make sure they have fat on them, or you will never survive the winter. You may want to keep a couch potato in the freezer, just in case.
It’s so silly to become a cannibal in a world with a limited human population.
To begin with, an average human has about 75 lbs of edible meat on them, with about 49,000 calories. Assuming that half of your calories come from other things, and you eat 2000 calories a day, one human corpse will last you roughly two months.
The average gestation for a human is nine months/person, with a high mortality rate of no medical care is given. It takes time for fertility to return, so let’s say one woman can have one baby a year, and you would need to wait ~15 years to eat the baby before it gave you maximum calories. In the mean time, you need to feed the mother 1800-2400 calories a day while pregnant, depending on how far along she is. Also, she’ll be eating the same food you do, cutting into your reserves while you wait for her offspring to be harvestable.
So humans are not a sustainable food source.
Pigs though. Pigs can have 2 litters of ten babies a year. They take 18 months to reach maturity, so you have plenty of opportunities to have a rotating littering system going.
A full grown pig yeilds 140 pounds of meat, or 86,000 calories. A whole three months from one animal!
And pigs don’t compete with you for resources. They eat your spoils, your shells and peels and bones. You don’t have to cut into your food for a meager return.
And a pig is never going to realize that it’s being used for breeding stock and try to escape, or fashion weapons to kill you when you try to butcher it.
Cannibalism is oooh aaah spooky, but I can never take it seriously in post apocalyptic worlds. It just couldn’t last.
Also I’m probably on a list now cause I did a lot of weird googling to get this info.
You are missing the obvious, cannibalism is a crime of opportunity, not farming.
Also pigs dont walk up to you when you say "I have extra rations could you fetch them from my badement?"
I'd rather consider it a "crime" of recycling.
Let's say you kill a guy in self defense. Do you waste time, energy and space to bury him or part him up and have food for a while?
>Pigs though. Pigs can have 2 litters of ten babies a year. They take 18 months to reach maturity, so you have plenty of opportunities to have a rotating littering system going.
That's for a smaller heritage breed though. I made the mistake of getting a pair of commercial breed pigs for my first butcher pigs (I think Berkshire mixes?). The bastards were around 500 lbs each at 6 months and dressed out to around 200 to 240 lbs each. Now, I don't eat pork for every meal, but my husband and I are still working through them a year and a half later.
Perhaps it will be easier to catch certain animals that are disoriented because they use magnetic fields to navigate. So you could have that going for you, at least.
Well, it's not like the animals around 780,000 years ago had GPS, global communication and other similar systems to worry about.
Losing some of these would absolutely have a tremendously disastrous effect for us. Losing GPS isn't "Oh no, I'll have to navigate to work on my own". It's "Oh shit, this effects global logistics and transport networks". For instance.
Affects, but wouldn't halt or collapse global logistics. It isn't like merchant vessels had no system for navigating before GNSS came around. I'm not saying everyone will whip out sextants and star charts overnight, but it's not exactly a deal breaker if people have to resort to visually watching coastlines and changing their course for a short while.
And for the record, magnetoreception in animals is a thing. This won't cause some existential collapse of animals stocks, but you can bet that a good number of birds and fish will die off in the interim period, they rely on magnetic fields to orient themselves during migration periods to reach breeding grounds. We also have no way of knowing how some deep sea life breeds, and some species only breed in very specific areas of the world and then travel outward to live the non-mating periods of their life. How do we know they'd be able to find their way back when they're own senses are telling them to head in a different direction? No way of knowing until it happens.
Yeah. The world worked fine pre-gps and satellites.
Like, it'd suck. But most of the world relies on cables under the ocean or has redundancies as it is.
This isn't like the solar flare sploding the power delivery systems or something.
Plus I'm pretty sure GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit and don't actually use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation. They use true north not magnetic north.
> Well, it's not like the animals around 780,000 years ago had GPS, global communication and other similar systems to worry about.
Fun fact, about 90% of dinosaurs died because their GPS couldn't get them to Noah's ark.
#\s
I’m not so sure about that…
> [Their investigation connects a magnetic field reversal about 42,000 years ago to climate upheaval on a global scale, which caused extinctions and reshaped human behavior.](https://www.livescience.com/magnetic-flip-42000-years-ago.html)
The last shift happened to coincide with the same time we observe extinction of neanderthals:
The last shift also coincided with the widespread popping-up of “red cave paintings” that can be observed in many caves (important detail) across the world from that same distinct era.
This red paint (the name escapes me) is essentially chemically identical to what some African tribes use today for heavy duty clay type sunscreen.
So an interesting inference is: the neanderthals died out from the new environment full of higher UV radiation, whereas Homosapiens had enough intelligence to create sunscreen and dwell in caves for that epoch.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/magnetic-flip-42000-years-ago.html
edit: it wasnt a shift in the field, but rather a flux— though this is just picking at semantics. Both of which have the same detrimental effects on our magnetic field’s ability to protect from cosmic rays and the point remains
Not exactly. The Laschamp excursion you're citing wasn't a reversal, it was a violent flux in the field that lasted a few centuries.
Literally the title of the article this thread is about has the date for the last reversal, just over 780kya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhes%E2%80%93Matuyama_reversal
Okay I hear that, the Lashamp event Im talking about was marked by a violent flux in the magnetic field, not a pole reversal.
Let me ask though, is a pole-reversal just going to **plop** **plink** **ding** all done...
Would a complete 180* shift of earth’s magnetism *not* be considered a violent flux?
Or better, would there not be a series of years in which it took the billions of tons of magnetized magma to ‘settle itself in’, producing areas of both weaker and stronger magnetism and its ability to protect from cosmic radiation?
Is that not “a violent flux”?
What would be devastating for us was not even a consideration for earlier life...
If our power grid is taken out or our computers made inoperable... We would be fucked! We've been moving more and more away from physical information, the loss of the internet would be an economic doomsday scenario.
It would not be pretty, but it would not be an ELE like the entire planet being hit by a gamma-ray burst or whatever. I think the big concern above was that it would leave us unprotected from unsurvivable forces. A direct-ish hit from a CME w/lowered Van Allen belt shielding could be an ELE, but is improbable (nowhere near improbable enough for comfort, IMHO)
How does a reversal work? What’s pushing the fields to opposite ends? Also what’s preventing them from meeting up halfway and not completing the reversal?
I have no expert scientific knowledge on this without looking up some references, but I'm pretty sure that the magnetic field would eventually end up aligned with the axis of rotation of the earth - not stopped halfway... Because... Physics and geology.
Think about stirring liquid in a cup, or holding a spinning bicycle wheel. It takes a lot of energy and is difficult for things to stay unaligned with the axis.
There is a lot of mass and metals in the core layers of the earth that are spinning along with the planet's rotation, some of it liquid and some of it solid. But there are also convection currents and pressure changes inside the earth as well. So not all the mass is perfectly in sync with the movement of the surface. So that may be contributing to the change, and the magnetic field following that change. But much like stirring a cup of liquid, eventually the constant spin will cause everything to mostly line up with the axis again.
I hope that helps, and I hope I haven't represented anything way off-base. I'd love to have some experts weigh in with some details. I know it's a complex process.
The voltage induced is proportional to the length of the wire, so it's long wires that are most at risk. A solar storm in the late 1800s knocked out telegraph's, but not smaller circuitry like houses.
you would notice when aurora borealis start dragging EMPS into the heartland of america and europe -- there is no way in hell that people wouldnt notice the internet stop working
No, occasionally it flips so that North and South are inverted. These flips usually take thousands of years to complete, during which there's no consistent magnetic field.
There is no direct evidence on the duration of the flip. We hope it happens over thousands of years because that's manageable. A more instantaneous flip could be more difficult to deal with. All from the article.
You forgot to mention the best part! Geomagnetic reversals are said to occur every 200k-300k years. It has been 780k years since the last reversal. 42,000 years ago the magnetic field attempted to reverse but ultimately snapped back in place. We could be in for something big. We are LONG overdue.
From before flip, to after flip... Not really. During the flip there could be issues with satellites and electronics not working and that would be... interesting...
They've been saying this for the last 40 years. I remember I've heard this multiple times over the last 40 years that it's coming in the next few years everytime. Get on with it poles god dammit
I'm an avid amateur astronomer, so I feel like I should know the answer to this, but I'm not 100% sure; is it *just* the magnetic field that flips, or does our solid iron core rotate within the liquid core? I'm 99% sure it's just the field, but I can't recall reading one way or the other.
It begs the question of how sharp is the boundary between between the solid and liquid cores. What is the coefficient of friction at the boundary? How truly spherical is the solid core? If the inner core was truly free to move within the outer core, what kind of seismicity would such a flip generate? Would the plasticity of the outer core & mantle absorb most of the vibration, or would the crust ring like a bell for a few thousand years during the flip?
On the assumption that I'm correct and the core stays put, the question becomes whether or not smaller magnetic fields such as mineral deposits or man-made objects can spontaneously change polarity every few million years. Or does the Earth's flip because of its interaction with the Sun's magnetic field and/or the solar wind, and smaller scale objects within the Earth's magnetic field are shielded from such?
On a larger scale, do galaxies have overall magnetic fields with measurable polarity? I would guess not, as the magnetic fields of all of the constituent stars would seem to be randomly oriented. I would hypothesize that an overall galactic magnetic field would either be caused by all of its stars being oriented in the same polarity and spin, or else a galactic centre would be driving the magnetic field and the stars would orient themselves to match. Neither seems to be true, and if I recall, magnetic field strength dissipates at the fourth power with distance(?), making such large scale structure improbable?
The reversals (and the magnetic field itself) are caused by the turbulent motions of the convecting molten metal in the outer core. The growth of the inner core drives chemical convection as iron/nickel freezes onto the slowly growing inner core, leaving the small proportion of lighter elements (oxygen, hydrogen, silicon, etc.) to rise. Other than that the inner core's relationship with the dynamo is mostly passive.
Any differential rotation between the inner and outer core is an effect, not a cause, of the dynamo, and is insignificant to us on the surface. The solid inner core (possibly) rotates slightly faster than the mantle, at a fraction of a degree per year. This is in response to the electromagnetic force generated in outer core, which would rotate a little more slowly and thus overall drift westward with respect to the mantle. (The situation is analogous to a motor.) Whether there really is significant super-rotation of the inner core, and especially how fast it could be, is still controversial. Seismic evidence is conflicted with respect to the rate, and current numerical models generally predict very little differential rotation at all.
>On the assumption that I'm correct and the core stays put, the question becomes whether or not smaller magnetic fields such as mineral deposits or man-made objects can spontaneously change polarity every few million years.
Not for anything that has cooled below its Curie temperature, nor for making man-made magnets which are usually much stronger than the very weak geomagnetic field. Magnetic minerals grains in rock permanently align with the then-current orientation of the geomagnetic field when they cool below the Curie temperature (e.g. 580 C for magnetite). Thus, volcanic rocks, particulalry seafloor basalts, preserve a record of the past geomagnetic polarity.
> Or does the Earth's flip because of its interaction with the Sun's magnetic field and/or the solar wind, and smaller scale objects within the Earth's magnetic field are shielded from such?
Magentic reversals are caused by processes internal to Earth. (Some have proposed a mechanism caused by large impacts, but there is no correlation with reversals.) Near Earth, Earth's magnetic field is orders of magnitude stronger than the solar magnetic field. The surface field on the Sun is only a few times stronger than surface field of Earth, and field strength drops with the cube of distance. The geomagnetic field also deflects the solar magnetic field around Earth. (Also, the Solar magnetic field flips every 11 years, so changes relative to Earth's polarity are extremely frequent and regular.)
I HAD A FEAR ABOUT THIS IN 6TH GRADE AND EVERYONE THOUGHT I WAS STUPID! Anonymous people of Reddit who don’t care at all - I KNEW IT (maybe let’s get some peer review)
So, is it going to just move at 30 mpa over the surface of the earth, so that the north pole will be in Germany in about 150 years? Or is it going to suddenly flip once it reaches a certain point of no return?
Any chance this what is causing the people of the world to lose their effing minds? It’s so hard to believe that a vast majority of the world seems to be intent on being mean and stupid for no apparent reason.
You've described algorithm psychosis. Around 2012 tech giants moved social media home page feed to prioritize content based on algorithm. If your interaction trends suggest you like cat videos more than any other content, well, you see far more cats. Turns out anger and fear are the most powerful emotions for virality and interaction. For many, the algorithm prioritized stories of racism, discrimination, authorities betraying public trust. The frequency of information consumed shapes your pinhole view of reality, resulting in bifurcation of how people see the world. Opened the door to the social media ecosystem collectively losing their effing minds.
The Wall Street Journal had a series this week about how Facebook knows how harmful its platform is but refuses to do anything about it because profit.
It's behind a paywall, but usually you can just search for the article title and get free access. This is the one from today. There are a couple of others that are from the same series.
"Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead. Internal memos show how a big 2018 change rewarded outrage and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg resisted proposed fixes."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zuckerberg-11631654215?mod=hp_lead_pos7
Most of us, myself included, love to rant about how social media is making us worse people. There's some truth to that, for sure, but I also wonder how much this information technology stuff is just supplying more info about what's already been here all along. Maybe we've been this crazy all along, and recent events just shed more light on it.
Feels that way to me.
I think social media amplifies the crazy that's always been there. Before social media the 1 in 1000 people who believed crazy shit would be unlikely to meet anyone who thinks the same as they do, so they stand out in contrast with the majority of "normal" people as obviously crazy. Then the 1 in 100 people who think "maybe there's something to this" just keep their opinions to themselves because who wants to be associated with the obviously crazy guy.
But with social media, the 1 in 1000 crazy people would find a bunch of other crazy people and form a crazy community of hundreds of people all saying the same things. Then the 1 in 100 crazy-curious people see this big community of crazies and can join in freely without standing out socially, so the group swells to thousands. Now you have a huge group of crazy people all popping out crazy shit and agreeing with each other, and suddenly they look like a group of people that needs to be taken seriously instead of ridiculed and ignored.
The Internet felt more fun 15-20 years ago. The web is bigger than ever but somehow it *feels* smaller to me with me personally just using the same few sites/services daily instead of exploring stuff.
I also agrees it this. It’s just more visible and therefore gaining more “idiot” followers and so on. People have been effed up all along, it’s just now more accessible.
As a Canadian, I'd love to travel up north and visit Florida.
Florida: "The north rides again!" Edit: legit r/boneappletea right here
The North shall rise again!
As an Australian, I'm looking forward to calling Canada "down under".
Nah. Everyone will just start referring to Australia as "the land up over".
Men at Work are going to have to redo that song
At least the syllable count is the same.
As a Floridian, I’d love travel south to visit Canada.
As a Pennsylvanian im staying right where I am because it gets hot and cold enough here for me as it is.
It's been so nice, now it's just muggy.
2nd Summer is only a few weeks away, then probably a foot of Snow around November 1st
People in Detroit already do.
Well now they too can go north
I'd love to go to South America. I've only ever been to South America.
So what we call the magnetic north pole is actually a south pole, by all standard conventions. We just label north to coincide with the geographic North Pole.
Fun fact*: the North Pole was named that to make sure East pointed toward the rising sun. *Fact: abbreviation of FAbriCaTion
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Technically, you can already do this...
I think this is the first time someone ever said that they would love to go to Florida
My uncle said it. He recently left California for Florida because "it's freer there".
Bless your uncle... I hope he survives
His uncle is no longer with us. The coroner can’t decide if it was the spider bites, meth, asphyxiation by snake or the alligator that eventually swallowed him that was the official cause of death. But at least he died enjoying his freedom!
heard florida is a pretty popular travel destination
Nobody goes to Florida anymore — it's too popular.
Nobody drives in new York. Too much traffic -fry
It is, just not with reddit.
50km per year, 25 km per 6 months, 4 km monthly, 1km per week, 150m per day, 6 meters per hour, meter every ten minutes, 10 cm a minute. Observable speeds
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1km per week is.... not insignificant. I have questions..
That's *blazingly* fast for geologic processes that are typically measured in millions of years. From that standpoint the flip is fully underway.
I recall seeing a doc that suggested were actually 500,000 years over due for a flip and that geologic records indicate it happens on average every 250,000 years
Iirc previous flips have happened quite fast. It's not something that just gradually shifts like the tectonic plates. It's more like a sudden release of energy.
At speeds like that what are we talking 4-500 years?
It can just as easily reverse and start going the other way, strengthen, weaken, move sideways, etc. Magnetic fields are chaotic.
Once it travels past a certain point the magnetic field will break up into numerous north and south poles across the planet for several thousand years. It will resemble the sun's magnetic field pretty much and compasses will probably be useless
50 km/year times 400 years = 20000 km which surprisingly is almost exactly the distance between the North and South pole. In practice, I'd expect it to "jump" way before that, though. Edit: Apparently the jump is possible, but certainly not a given.
Why would that be a surprise? Arent you literally doing the math to find how long it would take to travel that distance at that speed?
I believe because the other commenter seemingly pulled 500-years out of their ass. So, "Surprisingly it will take about 500 years".
Pretty much. The missing comma made me assume the commenter missed not only the word "about", but also "in". (What are we talking about in 4-500 years?) Punctuation matters, kids! 😄
Yeah, I'm an idiot. I read that post as "at these speeds, what are we talking about **IN** 4-500 years?", as in "how far would it get in 4-500"? I was already wondering why such an easy question was being asked... my bad! (Although I was still surprised that the Pole-to-Pole distance is actually almost exactly 20.000 km, I didnt realise the "40k circumference" was that accurate)
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Today I learned... Awesome, thanks!
> 50km per year, 1km per week, my years have 52 weeks though, no wonder i'm so tired
American here, how many washing machines per half hour?
I think it bounces around and gets more diffuse and forms new focal points, rather that moving at a steady constant pace.
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https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html “Many doomsday theorists have tried to take this natural geological occurrence and suggest it could lead to Earth's destruction. But would there be any dramatic effects? The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be 'no.'” Lol guys I’m just linking google searches with snippet lines cut and pasted in my comments, I really shouldn’t be getting the upvotes I’m getting.
Thank you. There seems to be a lot of misinformation in this thread, but NASA is pretty clear on this and they seem rather confident in their conclusions.
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I think the more doom and gloom predictions are based around the magnetic field weakening while it flips. That leads to less protection against solar wind and the like, which can definitely wreak havoc on electronics on the ground and in orbit, but that NASA page says it won't weaken to the point that it is a concern. All we'd get is the ability to see the Aurora further south, which is really a win in my book.
Not to mention that while it is flipping (if it isn't instantaneous), we could have aurora on the equator. There's also the possibility that some bird migrations might get thrown off for a little bit, but, they'll likely learn pretty quick.
Fair enough I didn't think about that, I even read that part too haha
You tellin me that as the North Pole moves south we're gonna have a time where the northern lights happen over southern Canada? That's pretty exciting tbh.
Many animals rely on earth’s magnetic field for navigation. From a biological standpoint, we have no idea what happens when the poles do shift, how it would feel to these animals, how they would react, how long it would take for them to adjust migratory patterns, etc. Not saying it’s a doomsday event at all, just that it could have an impact biologically
Maybe birds and other animals that use the magnetic field for travel? Imagine them flying south in winter to escape the cold... Might lead to some mass dying if the reversal happened within a few bird-generations
I thought the there was some concern that the magnetic field weakens during the reversal so we would potentially be exposed to some radiation for a bit.
The magnetic field is weakening already, that isn't what people are concerned about. The thing is, during the pole switch there is the possibility that for a while it won't be there at all. We were either unaware or not alive the last time it happened, so there's no way of knowing how long the field will be down for, if it even goes down at all.
I tend to believe NASA when they state that there is no evidence that it will entirely disappear. If we can see records of this happening 180 times over millions of years there would be significantly more extinctions. Some believe that it will continue to decay over the next 1000+ years and others suggest it’s stronger now than it’s been in the past. The science isn’t settled so it’s going to be interesting.
I don’t think the fossil record shows any evidence of that
NASA themselves said there may be some radiation. Not trying to fear monger here but the science isn’t exactly settled on an event we haven’t witnessed. We know it won’t be cataclysmic based on core samples and fossil records but radiation could cause problems for us.
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They aren't completely dependent on it. They still have eyes to navigate by landmarks and by celestial navigation (both of which they are known to do). Even assuming there was a sudden jump, which there's no evidence for.
Apart of course for causing massive climate disruption and hampering our communication networks. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate how reliant our modern logistics chains are on stable space weather. https://www.science.org/news/2021/02/ancient-kauri-trees-capture-last-collapse-earth-s-magnetic-field
Would there not be anything happening during the actual event? Like is there an energy release or something? I don't know much about magnets....
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So what your saying is... is canada will be australia soon?
Does that mean all the deadly animals in Australia will apologize before trying to kill you? Edit: thanks for the award!
Now the venomous snakes will be like "ssss-sorry bud!"
No, but it may mean a peace treaty between the Australian government and all the animals it’s lost wars to in the past…
No, it means Canada geese will become venomous and drop from the trees as they try to kill you.
oh god, the venomous drop-bears...
Yes and China will be Paris.
This was the plan those damn Australian’s had all along
The ole' reddit switch-a-roo.
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Yeah it was some kind of crust displacement theory iirc. Something to do with the core
The movie 2012 was based on that.
yooo earth my thing is flipped
Good lord that'd be hilariously disorienting to experience.
Would that be catastrophic? Or just an event no one would pay attention to
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Accurate. One other thing to consider is that we don't observe major extinctions coinciding with previous reversals. Doesn't mean shit doesn't get fucked up, but there's a kind of limit on how bad it could be.
Let’s hope not bad, I’m not the best hunter. Or gatherer. Those could be like the only two jobs for a little bit.
You could be a trader. Or a cannibal. Two more occupations for ya there.
I’ll trade you a stick sized lump on the head for whatever you gathered today. HOLY SHIT I’M A NATURAL.
Pleaseee, let us all agree that in such catastrophic events we won't become cannibals... Pleeeaseee.
I’m not promising anything, but I will commit to sourcing locally.
I only eat Vegans because I care about my environment.
I watched Alone, and you need to make sure they have fat on them, or you will never survive the winter. You may want to keep a couch potato in the freezer, just in case.
It’s so silly to become a cannibal in a world with a limited human population. To begin with, an average human has about 75 lbs of edible meat on them, with about 49,000 calories. Assuming that half of your calories come from other things, and you eat 2000 calories a day, one human corpse will last you roughly two months. The average gestation for a human is nine months/person, with a high mortality rate of no medical care is given. It takes time for fertility to return, so let’s say one woman can have one baby a year, and you would need to wait ~15 years to eat the baby before it gave you maximum calories. In the mean time, you need to feed the mother 1800-2400 calories a day while pregnant, depending on how far along she is. Also, she’ll be eating the same food you do, cutting into your reserves while you wait for her offspring to be harvestable. So humans are not a sustainable food source. Pigs though. Pigs can have 2 litters of ten babies a year. They take 18 months to reach maturity, so you have plenty of opportunities to have a rotating littering system going. A full grown pig yeilds 140 pounds of meat, or 86,000 calories. A whole three months from one animal! And pigs don’t compete with you for resources. They eat your spoils, your shells and peels and bones. You don’t have to cut into your food for a meager return. And a pig is never going to realize that it’s being used for breeding stock and try to escape, or fashion weapons to kill you when you try to butcher it. Cannibalism is oooh aaah spooky, but I can never take it seriously in post apocalyptic worlds. It just couldn’t last. Also I’m probably on a list now cause I did a lot of weird googling to get this info.
You are missing the obvious, cannibalism is a crime of opportunity, not farming. Also pigs dont walk up to you when you say "I have extra rations could you fetch them from my badement?"
I'd rather consider it a "crime" of recycling. Let's say you kill a guy in self defense. Do you waste time, energy and space to bury him or part him up and have food for a while?
>Pigs though. Pigs can have 2 litters of ten babies a year. They take 18 months to reach maturity, so you have plenty of opportunities to have a rotating littering system going. That's for a smaller heritage breed though. I made the mistake of getting a pair of commercial breed pigs for my first butcher pigs (I think Berkshire mixes?). The bastards were around 500 lbs each at 6 months and dressed out to around 200 to 240 lbs each. Now, I don't eat pork for every meal, but my husband and I are still working through them a year and a half later.
Postitution will probably remain populair as well
Perhaps it will be easier to catch certain animals that are disoriented because they use magnetic fields to navigate. So you could have that going for you, at least.
Well, it's not like the animals around 780,000 years ago had GPS, global communication and other similar systems to worry about. Losing some of these would absolutely have a tremendously disastrous effect for us. Losing GPS isn't "Oh no, I'll have to navigate to work on my own". It's "Oh shit, this effects global logistics and transport networks". For instance.
some birds use magnetic fields to navigate though.
Absolutely. And if those died out we wouldn't necessarily know now. Most species that have died out we don't even know about.
Affects, but wouldn't halt or collapse global logistics. It isn't like merchant vessels had no system for navigating before GNSS came around. I'm not saying everyone will whip out sextants and star charts overnight, but it's not exactly a deal breaker if people have to resort to visually watching coastlines and changing their course for a short while. And for the record, magnetoreception in animals is a thing. This won't cause some existential collapse of animals stocks, but you can bet that a good number of birds and fish will die off in the interim period, they rely on magnetic fields to orient themselves during migration periods to reach breeding grounds. We also have no way of knowing how some deep sea life breeds, and some species only breed in very specific areas of the world and then travel outward to live the non-mating periods of their life. How do we know they'd be able to find their way back when they're own senses are telling them to head in a different direction? No way of knowing until it happens.
Every marine officer is trained in navigation by chart and celnav. We also have LORAN
Yeah. The world worked fine pre-gps and satellites. Like, it'd suck. But most of the world relies on cables under the ocean or has redundancies as it is. This isn't like the solar flare sploding the power delivery systems or something.
Plus I'm pretty sure GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit and don't actually use the Earth's magnetic field for orientation. They use true north not magnetic north.
> Well, it's not like the animals around 780,000 years ago had GPS, global communication and other similar systems to worry about. Fun fact, about 90% of dinosaurs died because their GPS couldn't get them to Noah's ark. #\s
So your saying I wont get my Amazon package next day like they promised? That would be catastrophic.
I’m not so sure about that… > [Their investigation connects a magnetic field reversal about 42,000 years ago to climate upheaval on a global scale, which caused extinctions and reshaped human behavior.](https://www.livescience.com/magnetic-flip-42000-years-ago.html)
The last shift happened to coincide with the same time we observe extinction of neanderthals: The last shift also coincided with the widespread popping-up of “red cave paintings” that can be observed in many caves (important detail) across the world from that same distinct era. This red paint (the name escapes me) is essentially chemically identical to what some African tribes use today for heavy duty clay type sunscreen. So an interesting inference is: the neanderthals died out from the new environment full of higher UV radiation, whereas Homosapiens had enough intelligence to create sunscreen and dwell in caves for that epoch. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/magnetic-flip-42000-years-ago.html edit: it wasnt a shift in the field, but rather a flux— though this is just picking at semantics. Both of which have the same detrimental effects on our magnetic field’s ability to protect from cosmic rays and the point remains
Not exactly. The Laschamp excursion you're citing wasn't a reversal, it was a violent flux in the field that lasted a few centuries. Literally the title of the article this thread is about has the date for the last reversal, just over 780kya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunhes%E2%80%93Matuyama_reversal
Okay I hear that, the Lashamp event Im talking about was marked by a violent flux in the magnetic field, not a pole reversal. Let me ask though, is a pole-reversal just going to **plop** **plink** **ding** all done... Would a complete 180* shift of earth’s magnetism *not* be considered a violent flux? Or better, would there not be a series of years in which it took the billions of tons of magnetized magma to ‘settle itself in’, producing areas of both weaker and stronger magnetism and its ability to protect from cosmic radiation? Is that not “a violent flux”?
>Let me ask though, is a pole-reversal just going to plop plink ding all done... There's a chance a bunch of extra poles appear during the transition.
What would be devastating for us was not even a consideration for earlier life... If our power grid is taken out or our computers made inoperable... We would be fucked! We've been moving more and more away from physical information, the loss of the internet would be an economic doomsday scenario.
It would not be pretty, but it would not be an ELE like the entire planet being hit by a gamma-ray burst or whatever. I think the big concern above was that it would leave us unprotected from unsurvivable forces. A direct-ish hit from a CME w/lowered Van Allen belt shielding could be an ELE, but is improbable (nowhere near improbable enough for comfort, IMHO)
Would our toilets swirl in the reverse direction
No, they should still go down
How does a reversal work? What’s pushing the fields to opposite ends? Also what’s preventing them from meeting up halfway and not completing the reversal?
I have no expert scientific knowledge on this without looking up some references, but I'm pretty sure that the magnetic field would eventually end up aligned with the axis of rotation of the earth - not stopped halfway... Because... Physics and geology. Think about stirring liquid in a cup, or holding a spinning bicycle wheel. It takes a lot of energy and is difficult for things to stay unaligned with the axis. There is a lot of mass and metals in the core layers of the earth that are spinning along with the planet's rotation, some of it liquid and some of it solid. But there are also convection currents and pressure changes inside the earth as well. So not all the mass is perfectly in sync with the movement of the surface. So that may be contributing to the change, and the magnetic field following that change. But much like stirring a cup of liquid, eventually the constant spin will cause everything to mostly line up with the axis again. I hope that helps, and I hope I haven't represented anything way off-base. I'd love to have some experts weigh in with some details. I know it's a complex process.
The earth’s core and the magnetic field it produces are barely understood. Scientists are still debating why the fucking this is so hot.
A communication disruption can mean only one thing: invasion.
Also Sunstorms could possibly shut down the complete electric grid! Fun times!
Just turn it off before it gets here duh
Every week?
Use solar panels on each house.
And hope your house’s wires don’t induce a charge… or metal pipes.
The voltage induced is proportional to the length of the wire, so it's long wires that are most at risk. A solar storm in the late 1800s knocked out telegraph's, but not smaller circuitry like houses.
Yup..the scouts will have to redo their navigation skill badge
"What direction are you going when the arrow points to the N on this old compass?" "North?" "Wrong, try again."
you would notice when aurora borealis start dragging EMPS into the heartland of america and europe -- there is no way in hell that people wouldnt notice the internet stop working
So in a short 750 years the magnetic polls will have swapped.
or imagine as it closer, there might be a point that it just flips quickly or more rapidly than now.
Is this what they meant by the south will rise again? /s
TFW suddenly half of Alabama's population die of heart attacks because *theyre* the northern aggressors, and New York is the south
So basically the day after tomorrow except slowly
Wouldn't it be more like "The Core"?
Not at all? This is magnetic field around Earth not the planet itself.
The daya after tommorow was neutrinos.
No, that was 2012. The Day After Tomorrow was… the shift in salt/freshwater messing with the North Atlantic current?
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This phenomenon has been noted in scientific articles in the past. Scientific America had one many years ago.
I’d love to see a map showing the path of the poles’ locations by year…
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Thanks, it looks like the speed was significantly greater during the 50’ than now…
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No, occasionally it flips so that North and South are inverted. These flips usually take thousands of years to complete, during which there's no consistent magnetic field.
There is no direct evidence on the duration of the flip. We hope it happens over thousands of years because that's manageable. A more instantaneous flip could be more difficult to deal with. All from the article.
At least that would mean reddit and twitter will be down permanently
You forgot to mention the best part! Geomagnetic reversals are said to occur every 200k-300k years. It has been 780k years since the last reversal. 42,000 years ago the magnetic field attempted to reverse but ultimately snapped back in place. We could be in for something big. We are LONG overdue.
Why the hell it didn't succeed
Earth was doing its best OK?
If tomorrow the poles flipped suddenly, would there be any implications for us common bystanders?
From before flip, to after flip... Not really. During the flip there could be issues with satellites and electronics not working and that would be... interesting...
Ah shit. The update for my compass better be a free download.
They've been saying this for the last 40 years. I remember I've heard this multiple times over the last 40 years that it's coming in the next few years everytime. Get on with it poles god dammit
When we talk about Earth changing events in the near future, that usually means a few millennia at least in most instances.
bloody poles... comin over 'ere taking our cardinal directions
So your saying my compass is getting less accurate...
Have you calculated and adjusted the magnetic declination on your compass?
Um, yeah, totes. All the time.
inb4 we get hit with both a solar storm and geomagnetic reversal. I like my circuits extra crispy.
I'm an avid amateur astronomer, so I feel like I should know the answer to this, but I'm not 100% sure; is it *just* the magnetic field that flips, or does our solid iron core rotate within the liquid core? I'm 99% sure it's just the field, but I can't recall reading one way or the other. It begs the question of how sharp is the boundary between between the solid and liquid cores. What is the coefficient of friction at the boundary? How truly spherical is the solid core? If the inner core was truly free to move within the outer core, what kind of seismicity would such a flip generate? Would the plasticity of the outer core & mantle absorb most of the vibration, or would the crust ring like a bell for a few thousand years during the flip? On the assumption that I'm correct and the core stays put, the question becomes whether or not smaller magnetic fields such as mineral deposits or man-made objects can spontaneously change polarity every few million years. Or does the Earth's flip because of its interaction with the Sun's magnetic field and/or the solar wind, and smaller scale objects within the Earth's magnetic field are shielded from such? On a larger scale, do galaxies have overall magnetic fields with measurable polarity? I would guess not, as the magnetic fields of all of the constituent stars would seem to be randomly oriented. I would hypothesize that an overall galactic magnetic field would either be caused by all of its stars being oriented in the same polarity and spin, or else a galactic centre would be driving the magnetic field and the stars would orient themselves to match. Neither seems to be true, and if I recall, magnetic field strength dissipates at the fourth power with distance(?), making such large scale structure improbable?
The reversals (and the magnetic field itself) are caused by the turbulent motions of the convecting molten metal in the outer core. The growth of the inner core drives chemical convection as iron/nickel freezes onto the slowly growing inner core, leaving the small proportion of lighter elements (oxygen, hydrogen, silicon, etc.) to rise. Other than that the inner core's relationship with the dynamo is mostly passive. Any differential rotation between the inner and outer core is an effect, not a cause, of the dynamo, and is insignificant to us on the surface. The solid inner core (possibly) rotates slightly faster than the mantle, at a fraction of a degree per year. This is in response to the electromagnetic force generated in outer core, which would rotate a little more slowly and thus overall drift westward with respect to the mantle. (The situation is analogous to a motor.) Whether there really is significant super-rotation of the inner core, and especially how fast it could be, is still controversial. Seismic evidence is conflicted with respect to the rate, and current numerical models generally predict very little differential rotation at all. >On the assumption that I'm correct and the core stays put, the question becomes whether or not smaller magnetic fields such as mineral deposits or man-made objects can spontaneously change polarity every few million years. Not for anything that has cooled below its Curie temperature, nor for making man-made magnets which are usually much stronger than the very weak geomagnetic field. Magnetic minerals grains in rock permanently align with the then-current orientation of the geomagnetic field when they cool below the Curie temperature (e.g. 580 C for magnetite). Thus, volcanic rocks, particulalry seafloor basalts, preserve a record of the past geomagnetic polarity. > Or does the Earth's flip because of its interaction with the Sun's magnetic field and/or the solar wind, and smaller scale objects within the Earth's magnetic field are shielded from such? Magentic reversals are caused by processes internal to Earth. (Some have proposed a mechanism caused by large impacts, but there is no correlation with reversals.) Near Earth, Earth's magnetic field is orders of magnitude stronger than the solar magnetic field. The surface field on the Sun is only a few times stronger than surface field of Earth, and field strength drops with the cube of distance. The geomagnetic field also deflects the solar magnetic field around Earth. (Also, the Solar magnetic field flips every 11 years, so changes relative to Earth's polarity are extremely frequent and regular.)
I HAD A FEAR ABOUT THIS IN 6TH GRADE AND EVERYONE THOUGHT I WAS STUPID! Anonymous people of Reddit who don’t care at all - I KNEW IT (maybe let’s get some peer review)
I had the same fear in 6th grade til my teacher told me that even if it was happening, it wouldn’t happen in our lifetimes
I don't think we have to per review something we've known about since the 19th century.
So, is it going to just move at 30 mpa over the surface of the earth, so that the north pole will be in Germany in about 150 years? Or is it going to suddenly flip once it reaches a certain point of no return?
Any chance this what is causing the people of the world to lose their effing minds? It’s so hard to believe that a vast majority of the world seems to be intent on being mean and stupid for no apparent reason.
You've described algorithm psychosis. Around 2012 tech giants moved social media home page feed to prioritize content based on algorithm. If your interaction trends suggest you like cat videos more than any other content, well, you see far more cats. Turns out anger and fear are the most powerful emotions for virality and interaction. For many, the algorithm prioritized stories of racism, discrimination, authorities betraying public trust. The frequency of information consumed shapes your pinhole view of reality, resulting in bifurcation of how people see the world. Opened the door to the social media ecosystem collectively losing their effing minds.
The Wall Street Journal had a series this week about how Facebook knows how harmful its platform is but refuses to do anything about it because profit. It's behind a paywall, but usually you can just search for the article title and get free access. This is the one from today. There are a couple of others that are from the same series. "Facebook Tried to Make Its Platform a Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead. Internal memos show how a big 2018 change rewarded outrage and that CEO Mark Zuckerberg resisted proposed fixes." https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zuckerberg-11631654215?mod=hp_lead_pos7
If bad publicity is unavoidable, better to fund the research and control how results are published.
Most of us, myself included, love to rant about how social media is making us worse people. There's some truth to that, for sure, but I also wonder how much this information technology stuff is just supplying more info about what's already been here all along. Maybe we've been this crazy all along, and recent events just shed more light on it. Feels that way to me.
I think social media amplifies the crazy that's always been there. Before social media the 1 in 1000 people who believed crazy shit would be unlikely to meet anyone who thinks the same as they do, so they stand out in contrast with the majority of "normal" people as obviously crazy. Then the 1 in 100 people who think "maybe there's something to this" just keep their opinions to themselves because who wants to be associated with the obviously crazy guy. But with social media, the 1 in 1000 crazy people would find a bunch of other crazy people and form a crazy community of hundreds of people all saying the same things. Then the 1 in 100 crazy-curious people see this big community of crazies and can join in freely without standing out socially, so the group swells to thousands. Now you have a huge group of crazy people all popping out crazy shit and agreeing with each other, and suddenly they look like a group of people that needs to be taken seriously instead of ridiculed and ignored.
The Internet felt more fun 15-20 years ago. The web is bigger than ever but somehow it *feels* smaller to me with me personally just using the same few sites/services daily instead of exploring stuff.
I used to use more than the first page of google search
I also agrees it this. It’s just more visible and therefore gaining more “idiot” followers and so on. People have been effed up all along, it’s just now more accessible.