Earth’s magnetic field flips over, what happens when the Earth’s North and South Poles roll over?
Once in 1905, the French geophysicist Bernard Bruins brought to his laboratory several stones, which he dug on the road near the village of Pont-Tharin.
When he analyzed their magnetic properties, he was struck by what they showed: millions of years ago, the Earth’s magnetic poles were on opposite sides of the planet. The North was South and the South North. This discovery spoke of planetary anarchy. Scientists could not explain this.
Today we know that the poles changed their places hundreds of times, the last time 780,000 years ago.
Sometimes the poles try to change places, but then again fall into place, which is called a guided tour. The last time it was about 40,000 years ago.
We also know that the next time they roll over, the consequences for the electrical and electronic infrastructure that governs modern civilization will be terrible. The question is when this will happen.
By the way: there is evidence that everything will not end only with malfunctions of electronics and the destruction of infrastructure, it is believed that after the coup d’etat, people will lose their memory and a long period of amnesia will come. Experts advise you to keep reminders for yourself – notes that need to be put in a prominent place in which to write who you are, what happened and what actions you should or shouldn’t take.
In the past few decades, geophysicists have tried to answer this question using satellite imagery and mathematics. They figured out how to look deep inside the Earth, to the edge of a molten metal core, where a magnetic field is constantly generated. It turns out that a dipole-ordered bipolar magnetic field to which our compasses react is attacked from the inside.
The latest satellite data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm trio, which began reporting in 2014, shows that a battle is raging on the edge of the core. Like fractions planning a coup, swirling clusters of molten iron and nickel gain strength and draw energy from the dipole.
The magnetic north pole is on the run, which is a sign of increased turbulence and unpredictability. The Kabbalah clan in the Southern Hemisphere has already defeated about a fifth of the earth’s surface. A revolution is brewing.
If these magnetic blocks gain enough strength and weaken the dipole even more, they will force the North and South poles to switch places, as they seek to restore their superiority.
Scientists cannot say for sure what is happening now – a dipole could repel the invasion of strangers. But they can say that the phenomenon is intensifying and that they cannot rule out the possibility that a reversal is beginning.
Earth’s magnetic field protects our planet from dangerous sun and cosmic rays, like a giant shield. As the poles change places (or try to do this), this shield weakens; scientists estimate that it can weaken to one tenth of its usual strength.
The shield can be weakened for centuries, while the poles move, allowing destructive radiation to approach the surface of the planet for all this time. Already, changes within the Earth have weakened the field over the South Atlantic so much that satellites exposed to the resulting radiation have experienced a memory failure.
This radiation has not yet reached the surface. But at some point, when the magnetic field is sufficiently reduced, it may be a different story.
Daniel Baker, director of the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the world’s experts on how cosmic radiation affects the Earth, fears that some parts of the planet will become unsuitable for life after the reversal of the poles.
Hazards: destructive particle fluxes from the sun, galactic cosmic rays and enhanced ultraviolet rays, radiation damage to the ozone layer are some of the invisible forces that can harm or kill living things.
How bad can this be?
Scientists have never established a connection between previous pole reversals and such disasters as mass extinctions. But today’s world is not the world 780,000 years ago when the poles last swapped, and not even the world 40,000 years ago when they tried to do this.
Today, almost 7.6 billion people live on Earth, which is twice as many as in 1970. By our actions, we radically changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean, damaging the life support system of the planet. Humans have built huge cities, industries, and road networks, cutting off access to safer living spaces for many other creatures. We pushed, perhaps, a third of all known species to extinction and endangered the habitat of many others. Add cosmic and ultraviolet radiation to this mixture, and the consequences for life on Earth can be fatal.
And these dangers are not only biological. The huge cyber-electric cocoon, which has become the central data processing system of modern civilization, is in serious danger.
Particles of solar energy can break through the sensitive miniature electronics of a growing number of satellites orbiting the Earth, severely damaging them. Satellite synchronization systems that control electrical networks are likely to fail. Network transformers can be burned in droves. Due to the fact that the grids are so closely connected to each other, a wave of destruction will race across the globe, causing a series of blackouts (domino effect) that can last for decades.
But these dangers are rarely taken into account by those whose job it is to protect the electronic pulse of civilization. More satellites are being launched into orbit with more heavily miniaturized – and therefore more vulnerable – electronics. The electrical network is becoming more interconnected every day, despite the great risks from solar storms.
No appliances, there will be no light without electricity. No computers. No cell phones. Even flushing the toilet or filling up the car’s gas tank would have been impossible. And this is just for starters.
But progress in learning how to track harmful space weather is not keeping pace with the exponential growth of technologies that could be damaged by it. And private satellite operators do not collect or share information on how their electronics can withstand cosmic radiation, which can help everyone protect their equipment.
We blithely built the critical infrastructure of our civilization at a time when the magnetic field of the planet was relatively strong, not taking into account the tendency of the field to anarchy.
This field is not only restless and uncontrollable, but at the moment it is also unpredictable. It will soon roll over anyway, no matter what we do. Our task is to find out how to make it less painful for our civilization …
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