Rapid increase in the movement of magnetic north

[TimH]

Weird. Not sure what this means. Related to mass animal deaths? Preparing for Mayan 2012?

What do you think?

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/07/magnetic-north-pole-shift-affects-tampa-airport/

[Gerarddm]

Haarp?


Lol. :-)

[Breakaway]

This "news" is over a year old.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091224-north-pole-magnetic-russia-earth-core.html

[AstoriaDave]

To the bilge with this.

[Gold Rock]

To the scientific community this fact is very old indeed. There is a surpassingly interesting NOVA episode called "Magnetic Storm" , the gist of which is that the earth's magnetic poles actually reverse over the course of time. That is, they swap polarity ('positive' and 'negative'). Thing is, this swap isn't instantaneous. They present evidence that during the cousre of the reversal, which can take up to a couple of hundred years (admittedly lightning fast in geologic time), multiple magnetic "nodes" can appear at various points on the planet. Imagine a time when a half a dozen or more significant magnetic poles existed at arbitrary points anywhere on the map. An aurora australis over Papeete? Could happen according to the big brains. Crazy.

[callsign222]

Airport runways are numbered to the closest 10's of degrees. As the magnetic pole gradually shifts, runways get re-numbered to reflect it as the heading gets closer to the next ten... EX: If a runway is 337 deg magnetic it will be called 34 (340 deg mag). If it shifts to the left and now points 334 magnetic, it will be re-numbered to 33. It happens occasionally, especially to runways near the half. The only difference is now we've got the 24 news hour cycle that has to be kept busy! Keep the advertisers happy! Make Profit! Pirates of the Caribbean comes out May 20! The Rapture will occur on May 21st! Coincidence!?........ I think not.

There have been recent magnetic pole anomalies, but these have been discussed for at least the past decade in the scientific circles. A swap can take thousands of years-- nothing for the planet, agonizingly slow to us.

[TimH]

LOL. Well it was all over the news last night.


keep in mind the wise words of Baz Luhrmann

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

[willmarsh3]

Tampa Airport runways are being renumbered as we speak.

[Michael D. Storey]

About this 'rapid shift': Does anyone know if the movement of the magnetics was ever slow and steady? Turns out that many (not all, maybe not most, but a big enough 'some' to be many) natural happenings slide ahead in fits and spurts, as it were. Is the implication that this is a crisis, when it may in fact be happening within the traditional norms of the last 3.5 billion years?

[Roger Long]

Is the implication that this is a crisis, when it may in fact be happening within the traditional norms of the last 3.5 billion years?

It depends what you mean by "norms". One of the more interesting quotes I've heard was by a climate scientists about 20 years ago saying that the most unusual thing he could see on the long climate history being made available by ice cores and similar data was the 2-3 decades long period of unusually settled and predictable weather that followed WWII. This was the period during which we developed most of our current infrastructure, agriculture, and expectations about weather and forecasting. He said that everyone would think the weather was going crazy but it was just going back to normal. (Please this has nothing to do with the global warming debate. Put any replies in that vein in the bilge.)

I saw a item a while ago saying that the magnetic field is weaker now than it was around WWII by enough that it can be detected by fairly simple instruments and that, if it had happened overnight, someone like a professional compass adjuster would probably notice the difference. It also said that compasses as we know them now probably won't be practical in another century or so.

[Gold Rock]

Mike, see if you can track down that NOVA episode (from 2003, I think). Most decent sized library systems could have it, or maybe you could rent it. But the program covered, pretty well, the history of earth's magnetic field. As I recall, the geologic record shows that this polar shift is a regular happening, albeit at very long intervals. A significant point was that the actual swap took place comparatively rapidly, though to us humans it would seem less so, and that the transitional anomolies would be, uh, interesting.

[TimH]

Is the implication that this is a crisis, when it may in fact be happening within the traditional norms of the last 3.5 billion years?


No implied crisis. Just one of those things that makes you go "Hmmm"

The magnetic poles could swap overnight. Will they? Probably not.


BUT I would hate to be on a long offshore voyage when it happened. Without GPS....it could become a serious crisis - albeit on a micro level.

[Fitz]

There is a record of magnetic reversals in ocean crust generated at mid-ocean ridges and spreading away from the central ridges. Polarity is preserved in lavas that have cooled and solidified. The record of reversals in the ocean floors has been dated and reversals occur somewhat sporadically. The last reversal was about 780,000 years ago, and suggests that the earth is overdue for another. More rapid intervals have been observed as well.

There is a decent summary here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

[Roger Long]

This is interesting:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9148-ships-logs-give-clues-to-earths-magnetic-decline.html

[TimH]

What about migratory birds?

[Chris-on-the-Boat]

This is but one of the many interesting things I would never have known of, save for this forum. A very sincere thank you to all of you.