Can the charts keep up?

[WhiteHill]

Busy time for geomagnetists:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1

[Jim Cate]

Very interesting! Thanks for posting the link.

Jim

[Don C L]

Yeah I just saw that today too. Very interesting stuff!

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, WhiteHill.
Interesting! Thanx.

[boatman61]

Old news.. its been wobbling for decades.. the concern over the last decade has been its getting worse prompting some to think in terms of a flip.
No one knows the effects this may have.. no one knows if its happened in the past and what effect if any it had.
Earth flip is not new.

[Benz]

If anyone is concerned about keeping their magnetic compass (or the variation in their local area) up-to-date, a weekly check with a pelorus could produce a nice chart to keep by the nav station. I've always wished for a website (maybe it exists by now) that posted variation values for every X-amount of square miles, or by region, or something.
But if this rapid drift is going to be a problem, maybe I should begin to manufacture and sell peloruses (pelorii?)

As for the magnetic pole switching, I'm a pole-switch denier. We have no reliable data that it has ever switched, and unless the earth stops spinning so that it's internals can somehow wriggle around upside-down, I'm leery of it's being possible.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Benz

If anyone is concerned about keeping their magnetic compass (or the variation in their local area) up-to-date, a weekly check with a pelorus could produce a nice chart to keep by the nav station. I've always wished for a website (maybe it exists by now) that posted variation values for every X-amount of square miles, or by region, or something.
But if this rapid drift is going to be a problem, maybe I should begin to manufacture and sell peloruses (pelorii?)

As for the magnetic pole switching, I'm a pole-switch denier. We have no reliable data that it has ever switched, and unless the earth stops spinning so that it's internals can somehow wriggle around upside-down, I'm leery of it's being possible.

Ahh.. But theres no reliable data it has not.. yet presumed data has various continents all over the shop in different ages..
Plate slip yes.. but what makes a large chunk move from N to S of the equator as rotational gravity should do the opposite.
Something musta flipped and maybe we are getting to top heavy for balance..

[ziacek]

The geomagnetic reversals have actually happened and there is enough information gathered to describe these events: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

[Benz]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Ahh.. But theres no reliable data it has not.. yet presumed data has various continents all over the shop in different ages..
Plate slip yes.. but what makes a large chunk move from N to S of the equator as rotational gravity should do the opposite.
Something musta flipped and maybe we are getting to top heavy for balance..

Well, but there's no evidence that lots of things haven't happened--that's no argument that they have. If I can't prove to you that my great-grandfather [I]wasn't[I] an albino whale, doesn't mean that he even might have been.
Unless something was witnessed by someone reliable who wrote it down, and others testify to his witness, it's all speculation.

[Benz]

Originally Posted by ziacek

The geomagnetic reversals have actually happened and there is enough information gathered to describe these events: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

Sorry pal, anything that Might Have Happened 41 million years ago is just specualtion, as I mentioned before. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said (slightly paraphrased): "Just because you don't understand how an ancient structure was built doesn't mean it was done by aliens." In the same way, just because we don't understand magnetic anomalies doesn't mean that 41 million years ago the poles switched. Or 180 million years ago.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Benz

As for the magnetic pole switching, I'm a pole-switch denier. We have no reliable data that it has ever switched, and unless the earth stops spinning so that it's internals can somehow wriggle around upside-down, I'm leery of it's being possible.

Have you actually looked for such data?


You may like to follow these links.


Try Wikipedia for a start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal


and then a couple of more authoritative sources;


Magnetic Reversals


https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tec...Atlantic-Ridge

[El Pinguino]

Looking at the map on the link.... I wager that - as it currently has the GP abeam to starboard and distance from the GP shall now start to increase - its movement will now start slowing ....

I'm sure its all to do with the earth being an oblate spheriod.... a bit like the effect on things astronomical due to the earth's orbit being an ellipse....

[Don C L]

One of the main pieces of evidence in support of Continental Drift is the presence of magnetically aligned iron crystals in the sea floor extending in bands parallel out from the mid-ocean ridges. At times the iron crystals aimed north in response to the magnetic field and then, quite quickly, the rock record shows they switched. Clearly they were responding to a complete reversal in the magnetic field, reversals that happened every 100,000 to 200,000 years or so... we may be in for a new one too, or maybe it's just on an "excursion."
Magnetic Reversals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
Take a look at the pic... yikes! Well GPS will save us, right?

[CaptTom]

Compass problems will be the least of our worries if this happens.

The magnetic field also shields us from cosmic rays. Not to mention our satellites, power lines and communications links. The next reversal will happen at some point. I hope it's not while I'm still around!

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by Benz

Well, but there's no evidence that lots of things haven't happened--that's no argument that they have. If I can't prove to you that my great-grandfather [I]wasn't[I] an albino whale, doesn't mean that he even might have been.
Unless something was witnessed by someone reliable who wrote it down, and others testify to his witness, it's all speculation.

Actually you should follow some of the links posted. There is quite a lot of evidence that the poles have reversed many times in the past. One of the most inarguable is the reversed magnetic fields in the solidified lava flows in the ocean floors as mentioned by Don CL.

I might not be on site to witness a forest fire but if I walked up to hundreds of acres of blackened terrain full of smoking tree stumps I would be pretty sure that one had happened.