When North Goes South: Magnetic Pole Reversals

Well that doesn't leave out many unproven THEORIES does it.

If you think things are "going" to get worse, you should really check the magnetic field of the Earth as it stands today. Magnetic anomalies exist all over the globe, including a huge spot of North-pole magnetism off the South Western coast of Africa. Thanks to the Royal Navy it's one of the oldest anomalies known. They've been watching it grow in both area and strength for the last 150 years!

Most geologists and geophysicists don't think that the poles simply collapse and then rebuild. The internal liquid structure of the Earth is far to complicated for that. Instead, models seem to point to eddy currents and a multiplicity of poles wandering around until they eventually get back into sync. Of course, this may mean that a whole lot more than just Alaska may get to see the Northern lights before things settle down.

I didn't intend to state there would be a slow reversal in the polarity and at some point a neutral point. The working theory I'm acquainted with states that a solid iron and nickel core rotates faster than the earth itself. The outer core has induced current from this phenomenon which creates our magnetic field. During a reversal, the irregular flow dictates the magnetic field and the of growing anomolies.

This is why i stated there could, at times, be more than one north pole as well as more than one south pole. If we are experiencing a reversal I would still suggest things would get much worse. That, of course, is still a debateable topic.

There is geological evidence, I understand, of several similar shifts (perhaps we can call them reversals) in the distant past. Do you happen to know if any of these coincide with any of the several great extinctions that have occurred? Or if there's any correlation with other phenomena such as major tectonic shifts, periods of orogeny, ice ages (or ice age endings), etc.?

I just clipped those so I could see them easier ! Maybe there's a connection at about 750,000 years ago, but there's plenty that doesn't correlate.

There's no telling what will happen as the magnetic field becomes more diffuse, but we'll probably kill ourselves before it happens anyway. No matter, some other blob of gunk will emerge to have a shot. It's just natures way of saying "Next contestant please".

Also, from the last resource I listed...

"Hominid gene mutations during Gauss-Matuyama reversal (2.3 Myr) appear to condition on a distinctly new species, Homo erectus, origin."

a.k.a. the birth of modern man...

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/IAGA2005/00193/IAGA2005-A-00193.pdf

Several studies correlate evolutional rates with magnetic reversal, which from my stand point seems to hold some water. I believe it's harder to reconstruct paleoclimate records that date before the last reversal some 750, 000 years ago, but in chemistry rapid change is always accompanied by an increase in temperature.

Yet there are so many reversals between extreme extinction events!!!

I won't be here.