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Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

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Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#81

Post by pmoriarty »

iamthepieman wrote: post #62
darkpuma wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm stockpiling orgonite right now to protect my family. When the magnetic poles flip that stuff is going to be worth it's weight in gold!

That was a rabbit hole i did not need to spend the last 30 minutes on. For those who don't have the time like I didn't Organite is a substance made of resin metals and quartz that balances and harmonizes Bio-energy (known as orgone). Orgone is analogous to chi or prana and is a type of bio-energy that reverses the effect of entropy[0] It seems to be a mix of crystal healing and EMF grounding (also known as earthing)…

The rabbit hole goes deeper than that.

You should research Wilhelm Reich[1], a student of Freud's who came up with the term "orgone", who fled to the US to escape the Nazis only to have his writings confiscated and burnt by the US government, which imprisoned him until he died.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#82

Post by VRay »

magduf wrote: post #58
mikestew wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone that has messed with a Raspberry Pi will tell you that you don't want to hang the hopes of humanity being rebooted on a consumer-grade SD card. And since I'm nit-picking, any scenario necessitating the rebooting of civilization might very well involve something that fries SD cards and takes the silicon in your solar panel with it (nukes, big solar flare thingy). Boy Scout Field Guide and an Army survival manua…

Nukes and solar flares can be protected against: just seal your electronics in a good faraday cage. Putting them in an underground bunker in a lead-lined room should do it. Your paper books won't last as long: today's paper is acidic and falls apart within a century.

I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted. I have begun to wonder if I am the only sane man remaining. Can the others not see?

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#83

Post by justinator »

lb1lf wrote: post #12
mrspeaker wrote: post #2

"While any magnetic-field flip would still be thousands of years away...". Sneaky sentence right at the end. Sure the last one happened 700,000 years ago, so it is "soon", the but article made it sound like it was happening tomorrow!

Discussing an unstable mountainous area with a geologist once, he made it sound like collapse was imminent, so I asked him when to expect it. "Oh, any day, now - definitely in the next 50,000 years or so..."

On the flip side: "Geologic Time includes Now"

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#84

Post by Izkata »

stcredzero wrote: post #60
virgilp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's either going to be supplanted, or it won't be. There is no third option. You're welcome.

False. Facebook could retain all the Boomers, but coexist for awhile with other social media dominating the millennial market.

I wonder why this is downvoted... MySpace and Facebook coexisted in a very similar dynamic for several years before Facebook opened to everyone.

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#85

Post by njarboe »

Articles on the fear of the Earth's field flipping are, as expected, not very realistic. The best current knowledge is that it takes thousands of years for the field to flip and the current fluctuations are within normal bounds. The wikipedia article on the Earth's magnetic field[1] is pretty good. See relevant quote from it below. Scientists recently updated the standard Gaussian coefficients used to describe the Earth's field a bit earlier than the usual 10 year adjustment. This is because the field has changed a bit quicker than the recent past and people are more interested in having a high accurate model these days, among other reasons. The release of this new model is why these kinds of stories are in the news at the moment.

The Earth's magnetic field is created mostly by the convecting liquid iron/nickel outer core of the Earth. It is a quite turbulent system and can not be modeled very well for numerous reasons. Here are a few:

The pressure and temperature is so high that depth (2900-5100km below the surface) in the Earth that is impossible to create similar conditions on the Earth's surface for more that milliseconds on milligram samples. The only measurements that can be made of the core are from seismic waves passing through thousands of kilometers of the heterogeneous Earth. We have decent measurements for the Earth's magnetic field only since people have been recording compass readings (1600AD or so) and really good global measurements only since satellite readings starting in the 1960's. IAAPM (I am a paleomagnetist)[2] and am happy to answer questions about this topic.

"At present, the overall geomagnetic field is becoming weaker; the present strong deterioration corresponds to a 10–15% decline over the last 150 years and has accelerated in the past several years; geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum 35% above the modern value achieved approximately 2,000 years ago. The rate of decrease and the current strength are within the normal range of variation, as shown by the record of past magnetic fields recorded in rocks."

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#86

Post by ChuckMcM »

mrspeaker wrote: post #2

"While any magnetic-field flip would still be thousands of years away...". Sneaky sentence right at the end. Sure the last one happened 700,000 years ago, so it is "soon", the but article made it sound like it was happening tomorrow!

There are a couple of issues here and it is important to be careful about not conflating them.

One, is the question of "how long" does a flip take? There is some evidence that it can take as few as 100 years[1], the previous consensus estimate (2004) was about 7000 years[2]. That is important because the faster it happens the more havoc it is likely to cause. If it happens over thousands of years then humans will adapt to a 'non constant' compass direction and find other ways to navigate. For example, GPS 'north' which can always point you to 0,0 on the globe.

The second thing is the timing. The pole is currently "racing" towards Siberia[3], so it may have already started flipping. At 30 miles a year it would take 416 years to fully flip. That is well within the 7000 year window and only 4x the 100 year window.

It is one of the more interesting confounding influences on climate change as changes in the magnetic field strength and orientation can change the amount of energy that makes it into the atmosphere from the Sun. That works both ways, either reducing the energy (more charged particles deflected) making it colder or increasing the energy (more charged particles impact the atmosphere) making it warmer.

[1] https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/10/14/earths-magnetic-field-c...

[2] https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358

[3] https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/ma...

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#87

Post by 0-_-0 »

imglorp wrote: post #41
justaman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah whoever made this site is bat-shit crazy. But there is tons of great information here. Anything from making soap the old fashioned way to brushed and brushless DC motors. Its really cool and wouldn't be the worst thing to have printed off and saved in a fallout shelter.

I've always thought it might be cool to package up a bunch of literature on a stack of SD cards and package them with a low power e-ink reader and a solar panel to charge it, then market as a "reboot civilization" kit. The hardest part is actually finding a generic e-ink reader with an sd card slot that doesn't cost $500. It shouldn't need to run full android, just show a PDF or TXT, that's all it needs to do. An off…

> "reboot civilization" kit

Or, as was known in Fallout, the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.)

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#88

Post by throwawaymath »

luma wrote: post #69
legohead wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." If we were pretty certain this was going to actually happen, the article would be: The Pole is flipping soon! Here's what you need to know. etc

When dealing with geologists and cosmologists, 1000 years is the textbook definition of "soon".

Quite right. In fact on geological and cosmological timescales, "in 1000 years" essentially means, "momentarily."

The modern measurements which underpin this observation have interesting parallels to the Vedic timekeeping of the Upanishads. Barely a (Brahma) day has passed since the beginning of the universe, and orders of magnitude more time must pass before Vishnu will blink for the first time :)

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#89

Post by adrianN »

sifoobar wrote: post #77
adrianN wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site recommends building domes out of Sulphur. That doesn't seem like very good advice. As a non-expert in survival, I'd be wary of trusting anything written by a person with a creative interpretation of what's real and what isn't. You never know what else they're having unconventional opinions of.

Yeah, we don't want any unconventional ideas to slip through; cause that might lead to changes, and evolution and all sorts of scary shit.

Yeah, in a life-or-death situation after Planet X realigns the poles, I definitely don't want the experimental survival guide when proven methods exists. I leave the bold changes to bolder people.

Re: Is Earth's Magnetic Field Flipping Soon?

#90

Post by adrianN »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #75
rory096 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primary heading indication is the directional gyro[0] anyway. And magnetic flips don't happen "suddenly" in the timescale of a plane flight. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heading_indicator

How fast are the flips. I've known about this effect for maybe a couple of decades, but never heard any theories on how fast the flip is. If the flip is really slow, then that seems to lead to less human catastrophe, but more difficult perhaps for other species? edit: s/far/fast

The problem with the flips is that they go hand-in-hand with a dramatic weakening of the magnetic field until the new orientation is established. During that time solar storms are not deflected as well and vulnerable electronics will be fried.
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