Is Magnetic Pole Shift a Cause for Alarm?

A recent Wall Street Journal article cited the movement of the earth’s magnetic field as a cause for potential alarm ~ but still posed the question, “Should we be alarmed?”

The earth's magnetic field is weakening at an accelerating rate. It is 15% weaker than it was at the time the north magnetic pole was "discovered"—and claimed for King William IV—by a British explorer in 1831. Should we be worried?

What's more, the north magnetic pole, after meandering through Canadian islands for half a millennium, is heading off across the Arctic Ocean toward Russia at the breakneck speed of 37 miles a year. It will pass close to the geographical North Pole in a few years. With the dastardly Russians about to pinch this British heirloom, should we be doubly worried?

While the WSJ admits we don’t know the answer, it contends there is no concrete evidence pointing to reasons for undue concern:

Though odds are strongly against it, it is just possible that this is the beginning of a polar reversal, when the North and South magnetic poles swap places. This used to happen quite often—by which I mean every hundred thousand years or so—but it's now 780,000 years since it last occurred, an unusually long interval.

During such a reversal there is probably a very brief interval (oops, there I go again; by "very brief" I mean a thousand years or so) when the earth has no stable magnetic field. This does not seem to have bothered our ancestors: There is no evidence of biological extinctions peaking during magnetic-pole reversals.

Click here for the complete article.

Magnetic North Pole Continues To Slip

Earth’s magnetic north pole is continuing to shift toward Siberia, a situation of concern to those who link a “Pole Shift” with End Times.  In its most dramatic form, a shift would result in reversal of the north and south magnetic poles ~ something that happens about every 250,000 years ~ with resulting cataclysmic havoc.

The situation was highlighted this week when two large airports in Florida renumbered runways to reflect new compass readings to match the new pole location.

Earth’s magnetic poles are governed by forces deep inside the planet. According to space.com:

An inner core of solid iron is surrounded by an outer core of molten iron. They rotate at different rates, and the interaction between the regions creates what scientists call a "hydromagnetic dynamo." It's something like an electric motor, and it generates a magnetic field akin to a giant bar magnet. The process is not completely understood. 

In the past 15 million years, there have been four reversals every 1 million years, or about one shift each 250,000 years, says Brad Clement of Florida International University, who has lead a recent study on pole reversals. The last one, however, was 790,000 years ago. That might suggest we're overdue for a big change. 

Not necessarily so, Clement says. The flips are not periodic, meaning they don't adhere to a schedule of even intervals. Yet the intensity of the magnetic field has been dropping for the last 2,000 years, and "it has dropped significantly" during the past two decades, Clement said.

Some scientists speculate a reversal is underway. Clement said that's like forecasting that the bottom will drop out of the stock market because it's gone down the past few days. "We just don't know," he said.

Click here for LiveScience article on recent developments.

Click here for Space.com background article quoted above.

Click here for 2012 Pole Shift predictions.

New Evidence Indicates Rapid Pole Shift

Just before we entered the new millennium in 2000, a flurry of books touted the apocalyptic prediction of a “pole shift,” where Earth’s magnetic pole would move from north to south with untold catastrophic damage. Originally discredited by most people as an outlandish scare tactic devised to sell books, the concept of shifting magnetic poles seems now to have much more scientific credence ~ though the pace is different and the effects not necessarily so dire.

Not only do pole shifts actually occur, but they happen rapidly in a geomagnetic sense, as new geological findings near Battle Mountain, Nevada, show. The new discovery reinforces similar findings in 1995 at the Steens Mountains in southeastern Oregon.

Describing the new Nevada find, Science News states:

Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa. Such ‘geomagnetic field reversals’ occur every couple hundred thousand years, normally taking about 4,000 years to make the change. The Nevada rocks suggest that this particular switch happened at a remarkably fast clip.

The Nevada find indicates the magnetic pole shift occurs at about one degree a week, while the Oregon evidence indicates up to six degrees a day.

Researchers aren’t sure why the geomagnetic field reverses itself. Many think it must have something to do with what creates the field in the first place ~ convective motions of liquid iron in the planet’s spinning outer core.

The last stable reversal occurred 780,000 years ago, according to Science News. Some geologists argue Earth is overdue for a reversal and might even be entering one now, as the geomagnetic field has been getting weaker over the past 150 years or more.

Click here for the complete Science News article.