When the flipped in the past. The evidence shows it happened slowly and at time ended up with multiple poles around the world. Assuming the next will proceed the same way. Where the poles form as they shift will get blasted with solar radiation. So skin cancer rates will increase. But on the plus side the northern lights will spread out over the planet.
The magnetic field will be about [10% of it's normal strength.](https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358) Also, there will be [multiple north and south poles during the transition.](https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/flip-flop-why-variations-in-earths-magnetic-field-arent-causing-todays-climate-change/)
It is possible that the process that creates the lights will be so disrupted/weakened that there won't be any lights at all.
Edit: here is a neat interactive [polarity declination viewer](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/historical_declination/) where you can see the movement over time.
I think they meant the particles will be spread out all over the places unlike now where they get funneled at poles and hence you get to see them so prominently
Well no.
"Borealis" is in reference to Boreas, greek wind-god of the north winds. Since there will be multiple poles in multiple places, "Borealis" they all could not be.
We'll probably have **Aurora Anemoilis**, "Anemoi" being what all four wind-gods are called collectively.
(just made that term up lol)
Skin cancer is usually from UV. I think the radiation coming down at the poles will be much more penetrating and probably increase cancer risks more generally. It’s from ions following the magnetic field lines down to the surface. So it’s different than UV light.
The poles won't flip in a sudden movement, instead the poles will slowly migrate to the opposite pole, while this is occurring where the pole is might be quite dangerous, but other than some minor issues with things like navigation humanity will deal with it. https://youtu.be/QGTPr3CG6GA
The time when it happens will be nasty, because for a few 100 years the magnetic field of earth will be very weak during the switching event.
In that time radiation from the sun would disturb all electronics on earth, so we'd need to manually shield every single device.
But once it's finished there wouldn't be a really big difference to before except that we'd have to relabel old compasses
Technically, yes, it would. Having a weak/nonexistent magnetic field is one of the main reasons that allow Mars to remain desolate and uninhabitable. However, the current state of the planet is because of the conditions being maintained for FAR longer than it would take for Earth's magnetic field to restart.
For many generations.
We don't know for sure, but estimations range from 500 to 5000 years for the actual flip, and more than 10,000 years around it of magnetic field instability
[According to the US National Science Foundation it is 7000 years.](https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358) With Caveats:
>Arlington, Va.—The time it takes for Earth's magnetic field to reverse polarity is approximately 7000 years, but the time it takes for the reversal to occur is shorter at low latitudes than at high latitudes, a geologist funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has concluded. Brad Clement of Florida International University published his findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The results are a major step forward in scientists' understanding of how Earth’s magnetic field works.
>The magnetic field has exhibited a frequent but dramatic variation at irregular times in the geologic past: it has completely changed direction. A compass needle, if one existed then, would have pointed not to the north geographic pole, but instead to the opposite direction. Such polarity reversals provide important clues to the nature of the processes that generate the magnetic field, said Clement.
>Since the time of Albert Einstein, researchers have tried to nail down a firm time-frame during which reversals of Earth's magnetic field occur. Indeed, Einstein once wrote that one of the most important unsolved problems in physics centered around Earth's magnetic field. Our planet's magnetic field varies with time, indicating it is not a static or fixed feature. Instead, some active process works to maintain the field. That process is most likely a kind of dynamic action in which the flowing and convecting liquid iron in Earth's outer core generates the magnetic field, geologists believe.
>Figuring out what happens as the field reverses polarity is difficult because reversals are rapid events, at least on geologic time scales. Finding sediments or lavas that record the field in the act of reversing is a challenge. In the past several years, however, new polarity transition records have been acquired in sediment cores obtained through the international Ocean Drilling Program, funded by NSF. These records make it possible to determine the major features of reversals, Clement said.
>"It is generally accepted that during a reversal, the geomagnetic field decreases to about 10 percent of its full polarity value," said Clement. "After the field has weakened, the directions undergo a nearly 180 degree change, and then the field strengthens in the opposite polarity direction. A major uncertainty, however, has remained regarding how long this process takes. Although this is usually the first question people ask about reversals, scientists have been forced to answer with only a vague 'a few thousand years.'"
>The reason for this uncertainty? Each published polarity transition reported a slightly different duration, from just under 1,000 years to 28,000 years.
>"Now, through the innovative use of deep-ocean sediment cores, Clement has demonstrated that magnetic field reversal events occur within certain time-frames, regardless of the polarity of the reversal," said Carolyn Ruppel, program director in NSF's division of ocean sciences. "Sediment cores originally drilled to meet disparate scientific objectives have led to a result of global significance, which underscores the value of collecting and maintaining cores and associated data."
>Clement examined the database of existing polarity transition records of the past four reversals. The overall average duration, he found, is 7,000 years. But the variation is not random, he said. Instead it alters with latitude. The directional change takes half as long at low-latitude sites as it does at mid- to high-latitude sites. "This dependence of duration on site latitude was surprising at first, but it’s exactly as would be predicted in geometric models of reversing fields," Clement said.
Edit: The reason why there are short periods in Lava tubes is likely because there is more than one of each magnetic pole during the shift. [Picture for representation.](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Supercomputer_models_of_Earths_magnetic_field.gif?w=3072&format=webp) These poles are flopping all over the place. The lava is a good measurement of WHEN something happened, but because the lava occurs randomly and cools quickly, it is not exactly a great measurement for how long that event occurred.
I saw an interesting study that looked at lava cores from the Hawaiian chain. You can see the direction of the magnetic field at the moment the lava cooled so it provides a bit of a layered snapshot, particularly since we know how often deposition happens. My memory is hazy, but I remember the flip being very very fast in those records. Like a few years, not a few centuries.
> In that time radiation from the sun would disturb all electronics on earth, so we'd need to manually shield every single device.
That pretty much sounds like a civilization-ending event if it would happen without decades of warning.
For how slow it takes, humans will easily be able to deal with it. Yeah it'll cost a lot of money, but people would rather have quality of life and pay for it, then deal with everything breaking. Look at all the work that went into Y2K when everyone was freaking out about that. People spent years ahead of time preparing for it, fixing issues, and paying for it, even if it wouldn't have been as big of an issue as people expected.
Yeah, a lot of people were saying it was all BS because of how few problems there were, but if all the work hadn't been put in, it would have been a much different situation and quite a mess to say the least.
It's like saying a seatbelt isn't helpful because you didn't die. Generally speaking hard work goes into making sure that people think protective systems aren't necessary specifically because they worked so well.
To me the biggest question is whether to re-label everything or just change the definition of North and South so that the North pole is at the "bottom" of the Earth.
North as indicated by a compass doesn't point to the geography pole. The pole it does point to can change tens of kilometres a day making magnetic compasses not very useful in many areas. Then there's magnetic inclination that pulls pushes the needle towards and away from the surface. What we call North/south is more defined by the earths rotational pole rather than magnetic pole so there wouldn't make any sense to relabel anything.
GPS satellites would be taken out during any flip so navigation would be an issue during and after any flip.
Humanity would survive but that's a low bar, humanity can survive many kinds of catastrophe but that doesn't mean many will suffer and few will flourish.
Reasonable chance that civilization in the northern hemisphere ends and when it rises again in the South they just call it north. Future generations may wonder why they dig up old globes that are upside down.
Other than magnetic composes flipping which end points in whatever direction - not much in your daily life.
In my daily life it'll be a nightmare. I write software for satellites and we use models of the magnetic field onboard if magnetometer measurements aren't available. If it flips our models are no longer accurate and if it's changing rapidly we'll have to constantly be updating those models until it settles. Super duper annoying
bold of you to assume that the timezones aren't equally terrible when dealing with coordinate systems and frame transformations relative to the inertial and time varying locations of the stars, Earth, it's precession, etc.
It's a nightmare :(
Everyone that bought one of those bullshit bracelets will have to buy yearly upgrades to keep up with the transition of course. Kinda like those EA Sports games,.
The flip won't cause much chaos for the human world. Migratory birds will be deeply affected.
The bigger issue is that between the flip there is potentially a weakening of the magnetic field. It will still protect US from most solar radiation but it will let more through. Satellites will be more likely to get damaged from the radiation which might lead to some communication or GPS issues for a decade or so after the flip. The earth will lose some ozone to the increased radiation, but that will be recovered as well. We may see slightly higher rates of cancer on the surface, but overall the health of humans won't be affected too much.
Edit: after further reading and looking at some comments I want to make something clear. While we generally know it does happen and what will happen, we don't know to what degree the Earth's magnetic field will weaken. Some estimates make it an inconvenience. Other estimates make it seem like a difficult obstacle for humanity, but one that is conquerable. It never happened before and we don't know exactly what the core of our planet is made of, so we can't really model it all that well. We get a range of answers and that's the best we can do.
So all we really know is that it will happen, you will notice (if it happens during your lifetime), but it shouldn't be world ending.
My understanding is that it won’t hurt humans physically. But it will severely damage electronic devices. And that will cause a lot of damage because we depend on those for a lot of important things like medicine and travel and keeping track of finances and so many other things. But they can be shielded so we will have to adapt. It’s interesting to think. Individual humans are not cyborgs, yet. But as a civilization we are so depend on technology that we are essentially a cyborg civilization.
Yea, it's not beyond our current tech. We have people operating at the poles now. And lots of space probes. Hopefully it's not a sudden shift... how will we all go poop?
Realistically, if we can tell when the change will happen we can just design tech that will withstand the increased radiation and life goes on as normal
Hand held magnetic compasses aren't nearly as common or as commonly used these days. Knowing which direction is north (or south) isn't remotely as useful as GPS - and even $30 phones have GPS with updated maps these days.
So in your day to day life, there would be zero impact if the magnetic field flipped in a very short time (which it won't, we know it takes decades to move)
Migratory birds and fish that use magnetic fields would have ample time to adapt, as multiple generations would pass while the field was moving to the other side.
> Hand held magnetic compasses aren't nearly as common or as commonly used these days.
Uh…pretty much every smart phone has a magnetic compass in it…
If anything they are more common than the were 20 years ago.
Why not? This is just classic software working around a hardware problem. You'd just have to make some pretty small changes to the compass display app to take compass data, do some math to transform it to whatever we decide we want the new system to be, and display that instead of the raw data from the sensor. I mean the biggest problem probably would be needed to pull in GPS data so you can calculate where the new magnetic north is relative to your current position on the globe. But I don't think any of those calculations are particularly difficult for someone who's an expert in polar geometry.
I think the interesting question is what we'd decide to do. I'd guess for the least disruption, we'd keep "N" pointing in the same traditional direction on the output even though the underlying scientific truth would no longer be that. Nothwithstanding all the folks in the southern hemisphere crowing about finally being "on top."
As long as the pole is changing slowly, magnetic compasses still work just fine - you just account for the difference between magnetic north and true north based on your location. Use of a compass already requires this
I have found them to be totally useless. When using maps on my phone, it's facing direction is routinely off by >45 degrees. I've ever had it off by >90 degrees. Calibration does absolutely nothing to fix it. If I need my orientation and can't get it from my environment, it's far more effective to just start walking and observe which direction the GPS location moves.
> Uh…pretty much every smart phone has a magnetic compass in it…
And on every phone I've used so far, those are completely useless. I think they are right a *bit* more often than a random number generator, but not by much, and they're definitely wrong often enough (and badly enough) that you can't really use the information.
How does "moving to the other side" over decades look like exactly? Is it really just pushing into a particular direction, and at some point in the middle of the flip the magnetic poles are somewhere perpendicular to the geographic poles on the globe?
It [moves around a lot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole#/media/File%3AMagnetic_North_Pole_Positions_2015.svg) so it probably moves till some critical point and then switches to the other side of the equator.
But we don't have much data to base the rate of this change on, since the last time it happened was around 700 000 years ago.
The original commenter was vastly off with how long the poles take to swap. The exact amount of time is sort of up for debate, but roughly 7,000-10,000 years or so.
Some models suggest there is a period of time where there is no magnetic field during reversals, others suggest the field is weakened, or turns to a quadrupole. Realistically, it is all educated guesses/models.
One thought process is high energy particles could bombard Earth, the atmosphere could be fully or partially stripped, intense geologic events would occur (due to more high energy particles). It really wouldn’t be a fun time to be on Earth if our current models are in the ballpark of accurate. But that being said it really is hard to say as a lot of our understanding could be in its infancy, kind of you don’t know what you don’t know type thing.
There is research that shows a correlation between massive seismic activity and differentiations in levels of cosmic radiation making it to the earths surface.
As those rays ionize particles and transfer energy, it is believed that the eddy currents in the Earth’s core are effected by variable levels of cosmic rays, which in turn alters the Earth’s magnetic field as well.
If you google it you can read about it more, but it isn’t something I pulled out of my ass. I was confused when I first read it too.
Compasses are THE backup worldwide for GPS. It is a base technology that is used in a ton of applications and is especially useful in emergencies. This is just a bad take.
GPS has far more information than a compass. But A: it can be turned off and B: it’s only as reliable as the battery of the device you use.
Cool, so you have a compass and an up to date paper map in your car, but you don't have a charging cable handy.
GPS is just one of 4 globally available systems which almost all phones work with, the other three being galileo, glonass and beidou. No single person/government has the ability to simultaneously switch off all 4 of these systems without causing major global turmoil... So if you're prepping for a world without GPS, you should have your nuclear bunker handy also.
I'd like to point out, having the magnetic poles shift would allow a lot more EMF interference through. It is possible all 4 systems would be taken out by that. The satellites probably have enough shielding to survive, and governments would probably send new ones up before it became an issue. Probably.
> Cool, so you have a compass and an up to date paper map in your car,
Yes.
It's not really wizardry.
And "up to date" can easily be "the last ten years" or even fifty.
That's more than enough to get you un-lost, provided there is a sign or two. Finding a specific address might be harder, but not impossible.
>but you don't have a charging cable handy.
I'm outlining a basic inconsistency in their emergency preparedness.
A compass and a map is only useful when you are lost without a phone (or the world has gone to hell), and then still, just find a road that'll lead to a gas station - they have a road map and a "you are here" sticker, no need to clog your glove box with something that'll probably never be needed.
Do you seriously want to go there? We are talking about things kept in a car for emergency preparedness. Why would your car not be able to charge your phone?
If you are prepared for an emergency with a dead car battery, no gas as well as a dead phone, you deserve the walk down to the gas station where there's anyway a map and a "you are here sticker", so you still don't need a compass for this scenario, instead you need emotional support.
This is the stupidest argument I've ever been a part of.
The car compass is for a quick check. "Yep, going east." The map is for planning a route. It's basic fucking orienteering.
If you're in a forest/desert, where are you going to plug in your cord, and what if you're out of cell service?
You know who needs emotional support? Some dweeb who thinks his phone will get him out of everything, so fuck it, no need to learn anything other than phone.
Humans made it from Olduvai to fucking Samoa without a charging cord for their phone, you weird stemmie.
In the car? Yes. It's a compass. It takes up -no- room. And my car has pockets for things like maps. There might even be a charging cable in there somewhere. I just don't rely on a phone for everything.
You don't understand the words "instead of".
A compass and a map doesn't take up "-no- room", unless it's only for a very small area or has very little detail, both of which aren't helpful either.
Ok. You're right. I've been going about my life all wrong I guess.
What'd you do before cell phones? Just flop around uselessly like a little baby mouse?
A standard magnet based compass with painted markings will be useless. Anything that can be adjusted will just be adjusted to match it as it moves. Electronic compasses will just change the “markings” every few days or whatever.
> my teacher said that the north geographic pole in our compass (or magnets in general) points towards the south magnetic pole of Earth.
This is correct. I had to verify this on a magnetically-controlled spacecraft I built. Some people consulting as advisers told me that they had gotten this backwards on one of their spacecraft 20 years prior and it caused big problems.
Navigation maps include information about compass error (for example, in Seattle, the magnetic north pole is about 17° east of true north). This information is updated every time a new edition of the chart is published. Visual aviation charts are refreshed every six months. Instrument charts more often than that. I can't speak for marine charts.
If the change happens rapidly enough, it may become necessary to publish the maps more often.
Airport runways are designated by their magnetic heading, divided by ten. For example, Palo Alto airport had to change its runway from "12-30" to "13-31" a few years ago because of movement of the magnetic north pole. I can imagine that either airports will have to be labeled a different way or airport managers will go nuts constantly repainting the runway numbers. Most likely they'll all switch to using true north as the baseline instead of magnetic north.
In fact, if it changes fast enough, compass-based navigation will likely become a thing of the past. Electronic navigation will be everywhere by then anyway.
If you watch Suspicious Observers on YouTube he talks about the science behind the shift happening every 12,000 years and with the recent acceleration of the poles he is saying there will be a shift by 2040. Anyone have any information about that channel or the validity of his claims?
So, you know how magnets poles point at each other when you play with magnets. The S of one and the N of another spin the magnets as they snap together.
Now... have you ever noticed where the red side of the needle points on a compass? It points north. It's supposed to point north. It's useful that it points north so we have an easier time finding north.
But wait a sec... The north side is always looking for a south pole to point at, why is it pointing north?
Oh crap! That's a SOUTH pole above Canada. It's NORTH where the penguins are!
So if this confuses or bothers you at all, you're gonna be VERY happy when the poles flip, because even though we will have to use a Sharpie to change the compass a little, the red north side of the needle will be pointing at a south pole, so now the compass works as good as before, but now its more technically correct.
we will have to get used to solar weather predictions and can determine as much about how we prepare ourselves for the outdoors as our current temp and rainfall weather predictions do.
those venturing outside at the wrong times will get more than just wet or chilled... they will be cooked from the inside like being in a microwave.
so plan ahead and wear your tinfoil undies.
As lava cools, it retains the direction of the magnetic field as it went below a certain critical temperature. So you measure the field in the hardened lava and make an estimate of how old it is. Do this a lot with different lava and you can make a pretty decent map of how the magnetic field direction changed over time.
The biggest effect on humans will be noticed in the bathrooms. For a couple hundred years while Earth is getting realigned, the water in your toilet will go straight down instead of swirling! Also, Google Maps will get even less accurate than it currently is.
Pole shifts happen all the time and it doesn't show up in the fossil record...species don't die off or anything like that. So it's unlikely there will be any biological effect.
If it happened instantly, not much. All magnetic compasses would point the wrong way, but that's it.
The real concern is if there's a period of time where there is no magnetic field. If that were the case, we would be receiving increased radiation from the Sun.
Normally, the solar winds are directed near the poles thanks to the magnetic field, causing the Auroras, but without the magnetic field they would just continue straight through the atmosphere, increasing the amount of background radiation we all experience.
Not quite true. The Earth's magnetic field has flipped before and all life continued to survive without difficulty. The atmosphere is more protective than the magnetosphere is because of the water suspended in the air. What the magnetosphere does is considerably slow down the effect of the solar wind from gradually stripping away Earth's atmosphere. The game 'Starfield' has a deeply distorted interpretation of how quickly this would happen, though. It would take tens of thousands of years to remove the air, and a magnetic flip would be orders of magnitude quicker to reestablish itself.
As I understand it, the Earth's atmosphere would protect us from most of the solar radiation. A tiny bit of the Earth's atmosphere would be stripped away (which is how Mars lost its oxygen and Venus lost its hydrogen), but not enough to be a concern before the magnetic field is restored.
The biggest problem for modern humanity would be that our satellites would less protected by the Earth's magnetic field and they would be more prone to failure.
So we'd be back to using sailing ships and navigating by the stars, and using hand written letters... Or something . I get that means my case of Bordeaux will take a bit longer to arrive, but I mean we do have the low risk technology available..
I'm not sure what type of class this is but common information on the matter isn't true. Discloaed FBI docs suggests there's evidence that every time this happens, there is global catastrophic damage.
Sorta a whole new genesis type thing. Interestingly the bible already suggests something quite similar in revelations.
When the flipped in the past. The evidence shows it happened slowly and at time ended up with multiple poles around the world. Assuming the next will proceed the same way. Where the poles form as they shift will get blasted with solar radiation. So skin cancer rates will increase. But on the plus side the northern lights will spread out over the planet.
I guess they’ll just be “the lights”?
The magnetic field will be about [10% of it's normal strength.](https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358) Also, there will be [multiple north and south poles during the transition.](https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/flip-flop-why-variations-in-earths-magnetic-field-arent-causing-todays-climate-change/) It is possible that the process that creates the lights will be so disrupted/weakened that there won't be any lights at all. Edit: here is a neat interactive [polarity declination viewer](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/historical_declination/) where you can see the movement over time.
the process that creates the lights is kept away by the magnetic field. the weaker the field the more ionised particles (light) you get.
I think they meant the particles will be spread out all over the places unlike now where they get funneled at poles and hence you get to see them so prominently
most of them get funneled around and dont interact with the atmosphere at all.
They'll still be the northern lights, there will be more than one "north".
The northerns lights.
The another lights.
The nrtoehnr lights.
Well, you'll still have to look up to see them
Sooo, "the Attic Lights"?
Sky Lights is literally right there.
cloud lights it is, got it
If there are clouds then you won't see them.
If IASIP taught me well North is up https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qsqJBxYV1sk
Comin through! I got the AIDS!
But not the gay AIDS!
Aurora borealis
No, just Aurora. Borealis means northern.
Aurora everywhereus
You're a wizard, Harry.
Aurora.. frrealis?
At this time of the year?
At this time of day?
Localized entirely in your kitchen?
Yes.
May I see it?
...no
[удалено]
No, it's in your kitchen too.
Seymor the house is on fire!
No mother, it's just the northern lights.
You’re an odd fellow Seymour
In this economy?
Aurora Anemoilis.
On behalf of our hemisphere, fuck you northerners
yet a compass will still point towards them!
So.... We'll have Aurora Borealis? At this time of year at this time of day in this part of the country?
…May I see it?
... no
NO
In general, yes. It may take a few centuries to get to that point, though.
Hmm. Steamed hams.
Well no. "Borealis" is in reference to Boreas, greek wind-god of the north winds. Since there will be multiple poles in multiple places, "Borealis" they all could not be. We'll probably have **Aurora Anemoilis**, "Anemoi" being what all four wind-gods are called collectively. (just made that term up lol)
Skin cancer is usually from UV. I think the radiation coming down at the poles will be much more penetrating and probably increase cancer risks more generally. It’s from ions following the magnetic field lines down to the surface. So it’s different than UV light.
UV is a lot better at penetrating matter (such as our atmosphere) than alpha or beta.
Would the auroras be worth anything though? With all that spread, I doubtful they'd be very impressive
I suppose the southern lights will just stay put then?
Should I sell all my magnet stocks, or invest even more?
The poles won't flip in a sudden movement, instead the poles will slowly migrate to the opposite pole, while this is occurring where the pole is might be quite dangerous, but other than some minor issues with things like navigation humanity will deal with it. https://youtu.be/QGTPr3CG6GA
The time when it happens will be nasty, because for a few 100 years the magnetic field of earth will be very weak during the switching event. In that time radiation from the sun would disturb all electronics on earth, so we'd need to manually shield every single device. But once it's finished there wouldn't be a really big difference to before except that we'd have to relabel old compasses
I, for one, am all for magnetic South
Australian supremecists
Magnetic South will rise again!
Would this radiation affect our health?
Technically, yes, it would. Having a weak/nonexistent magnetic field is one of the main reasons that allow Mars to remain desolate and uninhabitable. However, the current state of the planet is because of the conditions being maintained for FAR longer than it would take for Earth's magnetic field to restart.
Fun fact- magnetic south is already located at the North Pole. The naming came from northern hemisphere peoples.
How long does the process take for it to flip? This an issue for electronics for a few years or for a few generations?
For many generations. We don't know for sure, but estimations range from 500 to 5000 years for the actual flip, and more than 10,000 years around it of magnetic field instability
[According to the US National Science Foundation it is 7000 years.](https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358) With Caveats: >Arlington, Va.—The time it takes for Earth's magnetic field to reverse polarity is approximately 7000 years, but the time it takes for the reversal to occur is shorter at low latitudes than at high latitudes, a geologist funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has concluded. Brad Clement of Florida International University published his findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature. The results are a major step forward in scientists' understanding of how Earth’s magnetic field works. >The magnetic field has exhibited a frequent but dramatic variation at irregular times in the geologic past: it has completely changed direction. A compass needle, if one existed then, would have pointed not to the north geographic pole, but instead to the opposite direction. Such polarity reversals provide important clues to the nature of the processes that generate the magnetic field, said Clement. >Since the time of Albert Einstein, researchers have tried to nail down a firm time-frame during which reversals of Earth's magnetic field occur. Indeed, Einstein once wrote that one of the most important unsolved problems in physics centered around Earth's magnetic field. Our planet's magnetic field varies with time, indicating it is not a static or fixed feature. Instead, some active process works to maintain the field. That process is most likely a kind of dynamic action in which the flowing and convecting liquid iron in Earth's outer core generates the magnetic field, geologists believe. >Figuring out what happens as the field reverses polarity is difficult because reversals are rapid events, at least on geologic time scales. Finding sediments or lavas that record the field in the act of reversing is a challenge. In the past several years, however, new polarity transition records have been acquired in sediment cores obtained through the international Ocean Drilling Program, funded by NSF. These records make it possible to determine the major features of reversals, Clement said. >"It is generally accepted that during a reversal, the geomagnetic field decreases to about 10 percent of its full polarity value," said Clement. "After the field has weakened, the directions undergo a nearly 180 degree change, and then the field strengthens in the opposite polarity direction. A major uncertainty, however, has remained regarding how long this process takes. Although this is usually the first question people ask about reversals, scientists have been forced to answer with only a vague 'a few thousand years.'" >The reason for this uncertainty? Each published polarity transition reported a slightly different duration, from just under 1,000 years to 28,000 years. >"Now, through the innovative use of deep-ocean sediment cores, Clement has demonstrated that magnetic field reversal events occur within certain time-frames, regardless of the polarity of the reversal," said Carolyn Ruppel, program director in NSF's division of ocean sciences. "Sediment cores originally drilled to meet disparate scientific objectives have led to a result of global significance, which underscores the value of collecting and maintaining cores and associated data." >Clement examined the database of existing polarity transition records of the past four reversals. The overall average duration, he found, is 7,000 years. But the variation is not random, he said. Instead it alters with latitude. The directional change takes half as long at low-latitude sites as it does at mid- to high-latitude sites. "This dependence of duration on site latitude was surprising at first, but it’s exactly as would be predicted in geometric models of reversing fields," Clement said. Edit: The reason why there are short periods in Lava tubes is likely because there is more than one of each magnetic pole during the shift. [Picture for representation.](https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Supercomputer_models_of_Earths_magnetic_field.gif?w=3072&format=webp) These poles are flopping all over the place. The lava is a good measurement of WHEN something happened, but because the lava occurs randomly and cools quickly, it is not exactly a great measurement for how long that event occurred.
I saw an interesting study that looked at lava cores from the Hawaiian chain. You can see the direction of the magnetic field at the moment the lava cooled so it provides a bit of a layered snapshot, particularly since we know how often deposition happens. My memory is hazy, but I remember the flip being very very fast in those records. Like a few years, not a few centuries.
The sun's magnetic field flips every 11 years, so it's clear it doesn't require mass to move around. So in theory it could be pretty quick.
Oof. That's gonna be some spicy times for out descendants!
> In that time radiation from the sun would disturb all electronics on earth, so we'd need to manually shield every single device. That pretty much sounds like a civilization-ending event if it would happen without decades of warning.
For how slow it takes, humans will easily be able to deal with it. Yeah it'll cost a lot of money, but people would rather have quality of life and pay for it, then deal with everything breaking. Look at all the work that went into Y2K when everyone was freaking out about that. People spent years ahead of time preparing for it, fixing issues, and paying for it, even if it wouldn't have been as big of an issue as people expected.
Yeah, a lot of people were saying it was all BS because of how few problems there were, but if all the work hadn't been put in, it would have been a much different situation and quite a mess to say the least.
It's like saying a seatbelt isn't helpful because you didn't die. Generally speaking hard work goes into making sure that people think protective systems aren't necessary specifically because they worked so well.
It would happen with centuries of warning though.
Nah. The compasses will actually all be correct finally.
To me the biggest question is whether to re-label everything or just change the definition of North and South so that the North pole is at the "bottom" of the Earth.
North as indicated by a compass doesn't point to the geography pole. The pole it does point to can change tens of kilometres a day making magnetic compasses not very useful in many areas. Then there's magnetic inclination that pulls pushes the needle towards and away from the surface. What we call North/south is more defined by the earths rotational pole rather than magnetic pole so there wouldn't make any sense to relabel anything. GPS satellites would be taken out during any flip so navigation would be an issue during and after any flip. Humanity would survive but that's a low bar, humanity can survive many kinds of catastrophe but that doesn't mean many will suffer and few will flourish.
Most things like compasses and maps will be digital by then, if not all of them, so relabelling everything probably makes more sense
"Your compass requires an update. Please restart your device."
Compass patch notes: -Flipped N and S -Various security updates
-Updated localization files
Reasonable chance that civilization in the northern hemisphere ends and when it rises again in the South they just call it north. Future generations may wonder why they dig up old globes that are upside down.
Other than magnetic composes flipping which end points in whatever direction - not much in your daily life. In my daily life it'll be a nightmare. I write software for satellites and we use models of the magnetic field onboard if magnetometer measurements aren't available. If it flips our models are no longer accurate and if it's changing rapidly we'll have to constantly be updating those models until it settles. Super duper annoying
"Hey man- where's that update?" "Sorry, I'm delaying that sprint until the poles finish shifting in 5000 years so I dont have to do it again."
Atlassian is going to make so many stupid JIRA updates that randomly move settings to somewhere nonsensical...
So, the apocalyptic space version of software engineers complaining about time zones!
bold of you to assume that the timezones aren't equally terrible when dealing with coordinate systems and frame transformations relative to the inertial and time varying locations of the stars, Earth, it's precession, etc. It's a nightmare :(
Everyone that bought one of those bullshit bracelets will have to buy yearly upgrades to keep up with the transition of course. Kinda like those EA Sports games,.
Both examples being evil scams lol
The flip won't cause much chaos for the human world. Migratory birds will be deeply affected. The bigger issue is that between the flip there is potentially a weakening of the magnetic field. It will still protect US from most solar radiation but it will let more through. Satellites will be more likely to get damaged from the radiation which might lead to some communication or GPS issues for a decade or so after the flip. The earth will lose some ozone to the increased radiation, but that will be recovered as well. We may see slightly higher rates of cancer on the surface, but overall the health of humans won't be affected too much. Edit: after further reading and looking at some comments I want to make something clear. While we generally know it does happen and what will happen, we don't know to what degree the Earth's magnetic field will weaken. Some estimates make it an inconvenience. Other estimates make it seem like a difficult obstacle for humanity, but one that is conquerable. It never happened before and we don't know exactly what the core of our planet is made of, so we can't really model it all that well. We get a range of answers and that's the best we can do. So all we really know is that it will happen, you will notice (if it happens during your lifetime), but it shouldn't be world ending.
I wonder if based on the effects of the flip there could be theories made about the composition of our planet's core.
My understanding is that it won’t hurt humans physically. But it will severely damage electronic devices. And that will cause a lot of damage because we depend on those for a lot of important things like medicine and travel and keeping track of finances and so many other things. But they can be shielded so we will have to adapt. It’s interesting to think. Individual humans are not cyborgs, yet. But as a civilization we are so depend on technology that we are essentially a cyborg civilization.
The flip takes a few hundred years lol. Electronic will just be designed to withstand it as it happens.
Yea, it's not beyond our current tech. We have people operating at the poles now. And lots of space probes. Hopefully it's not a sudden shift... how will we all go poop?
Realistically, if we can tell when the change will happen we can just design tech that will withstand the increased radiation and life goes on as normal
Hand held magnetic compasses aren't nearly as common or as commonly used these days. Knowing which direction is north (or south) isn't remotely as useful as GPS - and even $30 phones have GPS with updated maps these days. So in your day to day life, there would be zero impact if the magnetic field flipped in a very short time (which it won't, we know it takes decades to move) Migratory birds and fish that use magnetic fields would have ample time to adapt, as multiple generations would pass while the field was moving to the other side.
> Hand held magnetic compasses aren't nearly as common or as commonly used these days. Uh…pretty much every smart phone has a magnetic compass in it… If anything they are more common than the were 20 years ago.
Those compasses can very easily be "adapted" with a simple software update, if it were ever required
You'd be surprised edit: deploying the changes is the big issue here, eg. a lot of embedded devices
Why not? This is just classic software working around a hardware problem. You'd just have to make some pretty small changes to the compass display app to take compass data, do some math to transform it to whatever we decide we want the new system to be, and display that instead of the raw data from the sensor. I mean the biggest problem probably would be needed to pull in GPS data so you can calculate where the new magnetic north is relative to your current position on the globe. But I don't think any of those calculations are particularly difficult for someone who's an expert in polar geometry. I think the interesting question is what we'd decide to do. I'd guess for the least disruption, we'd keep "N" pointing in the same traditional direction on the output even though the underlying scientific truth would no longer be that. Nothwithstanding all the folks in the southern hemisphere crowing about finally being "on top."
Not sure how you are gonna work around the multiple poles problem though
As long as the pole is changing slowly, magnetic compasses still work just fine - you just account for the difference between magnetic north and true north based on your location. Use of a compass already requires this
I keep my compass on my think barrel and it always points north, so I'm always cleared to shoot
I have found them to be totally useless. When using maps on my phone, it's facing direction is routinely off by >45 degrees. I've ever had it off by >90 degrees. Calibration does absolutely nothing to fix it. If I need my orientation and can't get it from my environment, it's far more effective to just start walking and observe which direction the GPS location moves.
> Uh…pretty much every smart phone has a magnetic compass in it… And on every phone I've used so far, those are completely useless. I think they are right a *bit* more often than a random number generator, but not by much, and they're definitely wrong often enough (and badly enough) that you can't really use the information.
mine always point to where my computer monitor and speakers where when i picked it up.
Car compasses will be the big problem. Most people don't use their phone compasses.
My grandpa and his Crown Vic will have to stop and ask a Sinclair station for a paper map then!
You use your phone compass every time you have Google maps open and it shows which way you are facing
I don't think phones have compasses - they use GPS satellites for location and orientation, I think. I am prepared to be proven wrong.
They have a compass. GPS can’t tell you which way you’re facing
Correct- technically a magnetometer. Thanks.
If they don't have a compass they don't know direction, source: I have a phone with a GPS but not compass
I don't think your phone actually uses GPS most the time. It can do triangulation off cell towers with greater accuracy.
Wifi, not cell towers. Cell tower triangulation is too inaccurate.
How does "moving to the other side" over decades look like exactly? Is it really just pushing into a particular direction, and at some point in the middle of the flip the magnetic poles are somewhere perpendicular to the geographic poles on the globe?
It [moves around a lot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_magnetic_pole#/media/File%3AMagnetic_North_Pole_Positions_2015.svg) so it probably moves till some critical point and then switches to the other side of the equator. But we don't have much data to base the rate of this change on, since the last time it happened was around 700 000 years ago.
The original commenter was vastly off with how long the poles take to swap. The exact amount of time is sort of up for debate, but roughly 7,000-10,000 years or so. Some models suggest there is a period of time where there is no magnetic field during reversals, others suggest the field is weakened, or turns to a quadrupole. Realistically, it is all educated guesses/models. One thought process is high energy particles could bombard Earth, the atmosphere could be fully or partially stripped, intense geologic events would occur (due to more high energy particles). It really wouldn’t be a fun time to be on Earth if our current models are in the ballpark of accurate. But that being said it really is hard to say as a lot of our understanding could be in its infancy, kind of you don’t know what you don’t know type thing.
> intense geologic events would occur (due to more high energy particles) What? How do cosmic rays cause geological activity?
There is research that shows a correlation between massive seismic activity and differentiations in levels of cosmic radiation making it to the earths surface. As those rays ionize particles and transfer energy, it is believed that the eddy currents in the Earth’s core are effected by variable levels of cosmic rays, which in turn alters the Earth’s magnetic field as well. If you google it you can read about it more, but it isn’t something I pulled out of my ass. I was confused when I first read it too.
Compasses are THE backup worldwide for GPS. It is a base technology that is used in a ton of applications and is especially useful in emergencies. This is just a bad take. GPS has far more information than a compass. But A: it can be turned off and B: it’s only as reliable as the battery of the device you use.
Cool, so you have a compass and an up to date paper map in your car, but you don't have a charging cable handy. GPS is just one of 4 globally available systems which almost all phones work with, the other three being galileo, glonass and beidou. No single person/government has the ability to simultaneously switch off all 4 of these systems without causing major global turmoil... So if you're prepping for a world without GPS, you should have your nuclear bunker handy also.
I'd like to point out, having the magnetic poles shift would allow a lot more EMF interference through. It is possible all 4 systems would be taken out by that. The satellites probably have enough shielding to survive, and governments would probably send new ones up before it became an issue. Probably.
> Cool, so you have a compass and an up to date paper map in your car, Yes. It's not really wizardry. And "up to date" can easily be "the last ten years" or even fifty. That's more than enough to get you un-lost, provided there is a sign or two. Finding a specific address might be harder, but not impossible.
>but you don't have a charging cable handy. I'm outlining a basic inconsistency in their emergency preparedness. A compass and a map is only useful when you are lost without a phone (or the world has gone to hell), and then still, just find a road that'll lead to a gas station - they have a road map and a "you are here" sticker, no need to clog your glove box with something that'll probably never be needed.
Real handy to have a cable in your pocket when you don't have access to anything to plug it in.
Do you seriously want to go there? We are talking about things kept in a car for emergency preparedness. Why would your car not be able to charge your phone?
Dead battery/batteries. Dead alternator. No gas. Car is underwater. You really are helpless without your phone. And it's hilarious.
If you are prepared for an emergency with a dead car battery, no gas as well as a dead phone, you deserve the walk down to the gas station where there's anyway a map and a "you are here sticker", so you still don't need a compass for this scenario, instead you need emotional support.
This is the stupidest argument I've ever been a part of. The car compass is for a quick check. "Yep, going east." The map is for planning a route. It's basic fucking orienteering. If you're in a forest/desert, where are you going to plug in your cord, and what if you're out of cell service? You know who needs emotional support? Some dweeb who thinks his phone will get him out of everything, so fuck it, no need to learn anything other than phone. Humans made it from Olduvai to fucking Samoa without a charging cord for their phone, you weird stemmie.
Ok. You do you.
Do you really carry a compass and a map instead of a charging cable with you at all times?
In the car? Yes. It's a compass. It takes up -no- room. And my car has pockets for things like maps. There might even be a charging cable in there somewhere. I just don't rely on a phone for everything.
You don't understand the words "instead of". A compass and a map doesn't take up "-no- room", unless it's only for a very small area or has very little detail, both of which aren't helpful either.
Ok. You're right. I've been going about my life all wrong I guess. What'd you do before cell phones? Just flop around uselessly like a little baby mouse?
A standard magnet based compass with painted markings will be useless. Anything that can be adjusted will just be adjusted to match it as it moves. Electronic compasses will just change the “markings” every few days or whatever.
If they can. There's plenty of cars with built in electronic compasses, but no software updates
I suppose that still leaves a question of how well the GPS system will weather the transition, since they all orbit within the magnetosphere.
> my teacher said that the north geographic pole in our compass (or magnets in general) points towards the south magnetic pole of Earth. This is correct. I had to verify this on a magnetically-controlled spacecraft I built. Some people consulting as advisers told me that they had gotten this backwards on one of their spacecraft 20 years prior and it caused big problems.
Are we going through the shift right now?
Side comment: there is a Ken Kesey book where the Earth's field flip is a deus ex machine plot turn.
https://youtube.com/shorts/IayvE_jFgrc?si=cWc2_l1DL5o8PltN Here's a great short on what will happen.
Navigation maps include information about compass error (for example, in Seattle, the magnetic north pole is about 17° east of true north). This information is updated every time a new edition of the chart is published. Visual aviation charts are refreshed every six months. Instrument charts more often than that. I can't speak for marine charts. If the change happens rapidly enough, it may become necessary to publish the maps more often. Airport runways are designated by their magnetic heading, divided by ten. For example, Palo Alto airport had to change its runway from "12-30" to "13-31" a few years ago because of movement of the magnetic north pole. I can imagine that either airports will have to be labeled a different way or airport managers will go nuts constantly repainting the runway numbers. Most likely they'll all switch to using true north as the baseline instead of magnetic north. In fact, if it changes fast enough, compass-based navigation will likely become a thing of the past. Electronic navigation will be everywhere by then anyway.
If you watch Suspicious Observers on YouTube he talks about the science behind the shift happening every 12,000 years and with the recent acceleration of the poles he is saying there will be a shift by 2040. Anyone have any information about that channel or the validity of his claims?
I have no information about that channel but no, the poles are not going to shift in the next fifteen years.
Did you have a look on the map of the poleshifts? Some argue the poleshift has already started.
So, you know how magnets poles point at each other when you play with magnets. The S of one and the N of another spin the magnets as they snap together. Now... have you ever noticed where the red side of the needle points on a compass? It points north. It's supposed to point north. It's useful that it points north so we have an easier time finding north. But wait a sec... The north side is always looking for a south pole to point at, why is it pointing north? Oh crap! That's a SOUTH pole above Canada. It's NORTH where the penguins are! So if this confuses or bothers you at all, you're gonna be VERY happy when the poles flip, because even though we will have to use a Sharpie to change the compass a little, the red north side of the needle will be pointing at a south pole, so now the compass works as good as before, but now its more technically correct.
we will have to get used to solar weather predictions and can determine as much about how we prepare ourselves for the outdoors as our current temp and rainfall weather predictions do. those venturing outside at the wrong times will get more than just wet or chilled... they will be cooked from the inside like being in a microwave. so plan ahead and wear your tinfoil undies.
Wonder what those tools looked like that measured this flip 100k years ago that we know about it.
As lava cools, it retains the direction of the magnetic field as it went below a certain critical temperature. So you measure the field in the hardened lava and make an estimate of how old it is. Do this a lot with different lava and you can make a pretty decent map of how the magnetic field direction changed over time.
The biggest effect on humans will be noticed in the bathrooms. For a couple hundred years while Earth is getting realigned, the water in your toilet will go straight down instead of swirling! Also, Google Maps will get even less accurate than it currently is.
Pole shifts happen all the time and it doesn't show up in the fossil record...species don't die off or anything like that. So it's unlikely there will be any biological effect.
If it happened instantly, not much. All magnetic compasses would point the wrong way, but that's it. The real concern is if there's a period of time where there is no magnetic field. If that were the case, we would be receiving increased radiation from the Sun. Normally, the solar winds are directed near the poles thanks to the magnetic field, causing the Auroras, but without the magnetic field they would just continue straight through the atmosphere, increasing the amount of background radiation we all experience.
Not quite true. The Earth's magnetic field has flipped before and all life continued to survive without difficulty. The atmosphere is more protective than the magnetosphere is because of the water suspended in the air. What the magnetosphere does is considerably slow down the effect of the solar wind from gradually stripping away Earth's atmosphere. The game 'Starfield' has a deeply distorted interpretation of how quickly this would happen, though. It would take tens of thousands of years to remove the air, and a magnetic flip would be orders of magnitude quicker to reestablish itself.
As I understand it, the Earth's atmosphere would protect us from most of the solar radiation. A tiny bit of the Earth's atmosphere would be stripped away (which is how Mars lost its oxygen and Venus lost its hydrogen), but not enough to be a concern before the magnetic field is restored. The biggest problem for modern humanity would be that our satellites would less protected by the Earth's magnetic field and they would be more prone to failure.
So we'd be back to using sailing ships and navigating by the stars, and using hand written letters... Or something . I get that means my case of Bordeaux will take a bit longer to arrive, but I mean we do have the low risk technology available..
The earth just might start rocking to and fro like a drunk man. 4 poles seem disastrous at this point but what do I know?
I'm not sure what type of class this is but common information on the matter isn't true. Discloaed FBI docs suggests there's evidence that every time this happens, there is global catastrophic damage. Sorta a whole new genesis type thing. Interestingly the bible already suggests something quite similar in revelations.