Magnetic Pole Flip May Devistate the Earth

Originally posted by Johannmon
There is a magnetic anomaly in the Denver Colorado area that if my hypothesis holds true could have been the north pole at one time. If the earths crust shifted from the pole to approximately Denver it would take Siberia from a temperate region to an arctic one.

I think you may have misread the paper you cited. "Magnetic anomalies" are not places where the pole was located.

In specific, this paper that you cited
link to magnetic alignment

says very clearly

Thus, the scientists detected magnetic anomalies, or differences in the magnetic field from place to place. They found positive and negative magnetic anomalies. Positive magnetic anomalies are places where the magnetic field is stronger than expected. Positive magnetic anomalies are induced when the rock cools and solidifies with the Earth's north magnetic pole in the northern geographic hemisphere. The Earth's magnetic field is enhanced by the magnetic field of the rock. Negative magnetic anomalies are magnetic anomalies that are weaker than expected. Negative magnetic anomalies are induced when the rock cools and solidifies with the Earth's north magnetic pole in the southern geographic hemisphere.

If you're going to cite the "wandering continents" then you need to decide if what you're supporting is the Pangaea model (which, yes, does have the Earth as a single continent which then breaks up and drifts apart (over hundreds of millions of years, including movement of lands near the equator to the poles and so on)) OR if you're trying it out as a "catastrophic move of thousands of miles in a short time period" ... in which case you need to explain;

* why the earth's whole crust isn't shattered into powder from all the massive earthquakes as the earth moved
* why ancient star maps still show Polaris as the pole star (which would NOT be true if the continents were zipping all around (since as we all know, massive earthquakes and crustal movements affect the Earth's wobble even if fairly slightly. A sudden mass rearrangement would drastically change the wobble.
* the mechanism that shows thousands of pole shifts.


...etc

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
Yet there is no die-off of any kind whatsoever when geologists examine geological strata at the time of any of the magnetic pole reversals. Of course, the fossil record, even as recently as the Pliocene or Pleistocene, is not complete enough for us to say with any certainty that no species died off. Quite possibly, large number of birds and insects whose migration patterns depend on magnetic-field navigation could have become disoriented and perished; maybe to occasional species or sub-species extinction.

But there was certainly not a die-off as you�d find correlated to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary or the Permian/Triassic shift.

If you have any such data which shows a correlation, I�m sure we�d all like to see it, but absent any such evidence, I cannot see magnetic polar shifts causing any sort of geophysical or biological �catastrophes�.

Let me first thank you for your cogent input on this topic. I believe that to look for species die offs that correspond to magnetic flips is an excellent way to evaluate the theory. There is a problem in trying to correlate the two however. The problem is, as alluded to above, that should this theory prove correct the dating systems that we currently use to date the fossil record would be flawed if not completely incorrect. The dating system used to estimate when the polar shifts happened should be fairly accurate but the dating system for the flora and fauna of the fossil record relies on methods that are skewed if you allow for catastropic changes in the environment capable of laying down multiple layers of sediments in a short period of time. A new dating system would need to be developed that took into account these factors in order to correlate the species extictions with the polar flips.

I will point to the condition of the vast majority of the fossil record at this point to make a supporting argument. The fossil record is interesting in that many of its records show evidence of a catastrophe being involved in their creation.
A large majority of animal fossils appear in jumbled piles of hardened remains and are rarely found as isolated remains as one might expect of the random death of a specimen. FUrther the fact that most fossils show evidence of being encased in limestone and sediments could be indications of their formation is some kind of catastrophe allowing rapid burial in the sediments that became both their tomb and their preservation.

Here is a starting point link for those interested in checking the condition of the fossil record. link

Jon:

Originally posted by Johannmon

Now onto the Tesla.. actually it's not hard to define:

"The SI unit of magnetic flux (flow) density (magnetic induction). The magnetic flux density of a uniform field that produces a torque of 1 newton- meter on a plane current loop carrying 1 ampere and having projected area of 1 square meter on the plane perpendicular to the field. (T = N/A m) "

Since this is a public forum I am making an attempt to keep the language and terminology as simple as possible so as to facilitate understanding in a majority of readers. While I welcome your critique I would ask that you take into account the forum in which it is being posted. It is not my intention to writ e a scientific paper on this subject but rather to present a theory for discussion and analysis. Hence since most people reading this have no better understanding of a tesla after reading your scientific description than before it I simply refered to it in laymens terms. Same goes for the joule. I was trying to convey the power of the field, not for calulation but instead to give a sense of its magnitude.

Ok.. well then I misunderstood what you intended to present, and I will treat it accordingly.

Having said that, where the hell do you get this gobbly goop from:

link

I will obviously have to take time to read that. But the mere fact that the document starts off with 'God created...' makes me uneasy (not that I have a problem with folks being religious, but as a rule religion and science have in the past made very poor bedfellows).

your sentence structure is horrid.

My sentence structure is that of an orator not a writter, hence I combine many layered ideas into single thoughts and sentences. I admit that without the nuances of vocal inflection it can take a bit to follow. The plus side to that is that you must put thought into the reading and hence be engaged with the text to comprehend it.

Honestly, I think that is a cop-out answer. I have enough thing in my life that require my time. The least you could do is have the courtesy to present your readers with a clearly stated, concise set of points. To put the onus on the reader to spend time to validate (or dismiss) *your* theory is rather selfish don't you think?

Here is one link to muck, the siberian tundra, frozen mammoths etc link

[edit on 3-1-2005 by Johannmon]

Again I will read that link after I'm finished smashing numbers here at the office (the two are difficult to two in parallel )

Regards,

Osiris

Originally posted by Byrd

I think you may have misread the paper you cited. "Magnetic anomalies" are not places where the pole was located.

That is what the paper interprets. What I am siting in the paper is the location of the magnetic anomoly, not its conclusions which by the way do not necessarily contradict this theory in that it is not know in what orientation of the magnetic pole the anomoly was created whether N or S. For after a flip, what is now thought of as the Northern hemisphere will magnetically be the southern hemisphere.

if you're trying it out as a "catastrophic move of thousands of miles in a short time period" ... in which case you need to explain;

* why the earth's whole crust isn't shattered into powder from all the massive earthquakes as the earth moved

The movement of the crust first of all may be as little as 500 miles or as much as 3-4000. If one uses the existing magnetic anomolies as a guide one would expect somewhere inbetween these figures for the amount of crustal shift.

Now the reason that the crust is not powder is that the entire outer crust of the earth would do the shifting, not just one plate against the other. The effects would be stress related to the interplay of the crustal plates upon each other but would not pulverise the crusts because they would be moving as one system upon a liquid outer core.

* why ancient star maps still show Polaris as the pole star (which would NOT be true if the continents were zipping all around (since as we all know, massive earthquakes and crustal movements affect the Earth's wobble even if fairly slightly. A sudden mass rearrangement would drastically change the wobble.

The last recorded pole flip was before recorded history

* the mechanism that shows thousands of pole shifts.

look into the basalts found on the floor of the Atlantic and you will find the records of pole shifts you are looking for or if you like just go to the link ET posted.

Originally posted by Johannmon
The materials right on the border would continue to be too hot to hold magnetism but it is still plausible that in the time frame between polar flips that enough material has cooled that a suffient thickness is established to insulate it to below 1000 degrees (the curie point of iron)...
In other words it may not be necessary for the the material to be liquid in order to obtain its magnetic properties when solidifying but only that the field be present at the time that the crust cools below its curie point.

There just isn't any way for material in there to cool under iron's Curie point... even mantle's temperature is sufficient to destroy any magnetism.

Outer core: 5000 C, mantle: 2200 C in inner mantle and 870 C near crust.

alex.edfac.usyd.edu.au...

Inner Mantle... average temperature is 5400 �F (3000�C)
Outer Mantle... temperature in this part is between 2520 �F (1400�C) and 5400 � F (3000�C)

mediatheek.thinkquest.nl...

You're right, it isn't necessary for material to be liquid to retain prevailing magnetic field when cooling, only requirement are that material is ferromagnetic and temperature drops below Curie point of that material.

Originally posted by otlg27

I will obviously have to take time to read that. But the mere fact that the document starts off with 'God created...' makes me uneasy (not that I have a problem with folks being religious, but as a rule religion and science have in the past made very poor bedfellows).

I will agree that religion and science have made some of the greatest of errors together. I would also note that when searching for information that runs contrary to current thinking one must use sources that run contrary to current thinking. The creation science school of thought is one such source of information. It is important to carefully weigh what is stated from these sources, but is equally important not to dismiss it out of hand which I am glad to see you have not done.

Originally posted by E_T

You're right, it isn't necessary for material to be liquid to retain prevailing magnetic field when cooling, only requirement are that material is ferromagnetic and temperature drops below Curie point of that material.

So for this theory to continue the point of magnetism in the outer crust needs to be moved to the point where the Curie point is crossed by the cool during the period between the flips. Excellent modification to the theory!! Thank you.

Originally posted by Johannmon
Let me at this point post some interesting information on magnetic anomolies in the crust.

There is a magnetic anomaly in the Denver Colorado area that if my hypothesis holds true could have been the north pole at one time. If the earths crust shifted from the pole to approximately Denver it would take Siberia from a temperate region to an arctic one.

Remember that poles of earth's magnetic field and rotation axis are entirely different things.
Flip of magnetic poles won't turn rotation axis "upside down".
Geographic north pole is what lies in the end of earth's rotation axis, magnetic pole is separate and moves freely in respect to pole of rotation axis and earth's crust.

Here's enough poles to give you little headache while thinking which one means what.
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Byrd

That last one is an important point: it says that scientists have models that show the "rapid reversals" may instead be magnetic storm effects during a slower reversal. The Creationist model simply isn't adequate for this unless you postulate God hopping in and twiddling with the lava flows thousands of times in a short period simply for the purpose of "confounding scientists."

Let me clarify, I am not making a creationist argument, though I do site their sources. I am not postulating the particular theories of the sources I have named, nor am I, in this thread proping that the world is only as old as a creationist would say it is. This particular theory would suggest that the world is younger than 6 billion years old but what that age would be I do not yet have a sense of.

Byrd, the sea floor magnetic 'mapping' is very interesting. This tends to lead into the 'predictability' portion of this guesswork. The website www.es.ucl.ac.uk...

says "...with an average interval of around 300,000 years..." and gives a pretty good history lesson.

Now we need to go into business and devise the software packages which will correct all magnetically oriented data to a point of reference so that the military can still shoot it's missiles. Just joking but actually they would probably buy it.

And the tidbit of the Mammoths caught in a flash frost, eating greenery and it still in thier stomachs undigested, really intregues me.

If it happens in our lifetime, our world will go topsy turby..

Tuataras Third Eye

Originally posted by E_TRemember that poles of earth's magnetic field and rotation axis are entirely different things.
Flip of magnetic poles won't turn rotation axis "upside down".
Geographic north pole is what lies in the end of earth's rotation axis, magnetic pole is separate and moves freely in respect to pole of rotation axis and earth's crust.

I think that you miss the point I am trying to make about magnetic pole shifts. The hypothesis I am presenting suggests that a magnetic pole shift causes the outer crust to change its position on the outer core due to opposing magnetic forces between the Earth's dipolar field and the dipolar field of magnetically oriented materials in the outer crust. Effectively the rotation of the majority of Earth's mass has not changed but the position of the outer crust to that rotation has. Hence as Colorado shifts on the outer core away from the magnetic pole, which is imperfectly aligned with the spin axis, Siberia shifts toward the magnetic pole. The current magnetic pole is close enough to the spin axis that it would change the longitude of those land masses.

Originally posted by Johannmon
I will point to the condition of the vast majority of the fossil record at this point to make a supporting argument. The fossil record is interesting in that many of its records show evidence of a catastrophe being involved in their creation.
A large majority of animal fossils appear in jumbled piles of hardened remains and are rarely found as isolated remains as one might expect of the random death of a specimen. FUrther the fact that most fossils show evidence of being encased in limestone and sediments could be indications of their formation is some kind of catastrophe allowing rapid burial in the sediments that became both their tomb and their preservation.

Reason why there's almost always lot of fossils "in one pile" while separate fossils/places containing only few of them are rare comes from requirement of fossilization.
Body of dead animal has to be buried fast under sediment/something protective, otherwise scavengers destroy it fast.
Best places for fossilization are rivers/deltas of them, there sediments are piled fastest and rivers even collects bodies of dead animals to certain places. Faster current carries bodies to elsewhere, but in place with slow current they get stuck there easily, also sedimentation is fastest in those places because slow moving water can't carry much sand/mud and drops it "cargo" to those places.
(same reason why rivers make longer and longer curves while time goes, faster current in outer curve erodes while slow current in inner curve piles up stuff water eroded from previous curve)

Other good places would be swamps.

Originally posted by Johannmon

Originally posted by E_T
You're right, it isn't necessary for material to be liquid to retain prevailing magnetic field when cooling, only requirement are that material is ferromagnetic and temperature drops below Curie point of that material.

So for this theory to continue the point of magnetism in the outer crust needs to be moved to the point where the Curie point is crossed by the cool during the period between the flips.

Then problem is that earth's crust and upper part of mantle are iron poor because it has sinked to core because of its bigger weight compared to other materials.

Also if earth's magnetic field would be strong enough to bend/move iron/metal poor crust we wouldn't be using recording medias based on magnetism.

That reminded me about magnetars which are special type of neutron stars which would erase credit cards and magnetic medias from sun's distance, and from moons distance they would shred all metal from earth and "rearrange" molecules in our bodies.
And surprise, surprise, I found very good stuff about magnetic fields with that search word.
en.wikipedia.org...

When in a supernova a star collapses to a neutron star, its magnetic field increases dramatically in strength. Duncan and Thompson calculated that the magnetic field of a neutron star, normally an already enormous 10e+8 tesla could under certain circumstances grow even larger, to more than 10e+11 tesla.

As mentioned previously, magnetars have a magnetic field of above 10 gigatesla, strong enough to wipe a credit card from the distance of the Sun from the Earth and strong enough to be fatal from the distance of the Moon. By comparison, Earth's natural magnetic field is 50 microtesla, and on Earth a fatal magnetic field is only a theoretical possibility; some of the strongest fields generated are actually used in medical imaging. A small neodymium based rare earth magnet has a field of about a tesla, and most media used for data storage can be erased with millitesla.

So with enough strong magnetic field of earth we wouldn't be using magnetic medias!

Palaeopole positions place Africa, for example, over the south geographic pole during the Ordovician, and it is in the Sahara where the evidence of the accompanying glaciation is preserved.

link to paper

I had been wondering where the giant magnetic anomoly in the center of Africa came from since it seemed to far offset from the poles to fit this theory. Yet here is evidence that Africa was once near the southern geographical pole.

Originally posted by E_T
fields generated are actually used in medical imaging. A small neodymium based rare earth magnet has a field of about a tesla, and most media used for data storage can be erased with millitesla.

So with enough strong magnetic field of earth we wouldn't be using magnetic medias!

The earth's magnetic field is huge and powerful enough to deflect cosmic rays away from the entire planet. Just because you can create magentised items within this field does not lessen the strenghth of the overall field. The mangetar woudl erase all magnetic data because it is an outside field that would interact with the earths field causing the disruption. What also must be taken into account is the distance between the source of the Earths field and our magnetic storage devices. Computers within 40 feet of our most powerful magnetic fields operate just fine because of the distance. Surely the miles between the outer core and the crust serve as sufficient insulation as well.

Originally posted by Johannmon
I believe that to look for species die offs that correspond to magnetic flips is an excellent way to evaluate the theory. There is a problem in trying to correlate the two however. The problem is, as alluded to above, that should this theory prove correct the dating systems that we currently use to date the fossil record would be flawed if not completely incorrect. The dating system used to estimate when the polar shifts happened should be fairly accurate but the dating system for the flora and fauna of the fossil record relies on methods that are skewed if you allow for catastropic changes in the environment capable of laying down multiple layers of sediments in a short period of time.

A new dating system would need to be developed that took into account these factors in order to correlate the species extictions with the polar flips.

Science doesn't work like that. You don't say "okay, I think that dinosaurs died 20,000 years ago" and then run around adjusting the dating evidence.

A large majority of animal fossils appear in jumbled piles of hardened remains and are rarely found as isolated remains as one might expect of the random death of a specimen.

You speak of the Morrison formation as though it was a single entity, laid out during a single time frame. A look at some of the primary geological papers (such as geologyindy.byu.edu... Reprints/Age%20of%20the%20Morrison%20Formation.pdf ) shows that this is clearly not so. Ash fall is not in all areas, and there are different compositions and different creatures and different plant life in different areas throughout the formation.

FUrther the fact that most fossils show evidence of being encased in limestone and sediments could be indications of their formation is some kind of catastrophe allowing rapid burial in the sediments that became both their tomb and their preservation.

Limestone comes from diatoms and other tiny sea life "raining down" on an ocean floor (or from coral reefs.) If it had been a quick burial, then you'd have the dinos lying on one type of rock (like sandstone) and covered with a gazillion tons of diatoms (there's a problem with this -- to produce that many diatoms in one fell swoop (so that the dinos are covered with a decently thick layer of limestone), you would have had SO many of them alive that they would have used up all the oxygen.

... and while an area suddenly getting overwhelmed with diatoms and sucking all the oxygen out of the atmosphere ... ah... might happen (maybe), that doesn't account for the limestone layers elsewhere.

Here is a starting point link for those interested in checking the condition of the fossil record. link

Actually, that's the record of only one site during one time period. It's nowhere near the complete fossil record.

Originally posted by Johannmon

Originally posted by Byrd

I think you may have misread the paper you cited. "Magnetic anomalies" are not places where the pole was located.

That is what the paper interprets.

They very clearly say that the magnetic anomalies are not places where the poles are or were located.

What I am siting in the paper is the location of the magnetic anomoly, not its conclusions which by the way do not necessarily contradict this theory in that it is not know in what orientation of the magnetic pole the anomoly was created whether N or S. For after a flip, what is now thought of as the Northern hemisphere will magnetically be the southern hemisphere.

Really, the paper you cited does contradict your statements there. The anomalies clearly show where the north pole is during the time of the anomaly being created.

Now the reason that the crust is not powder is that the entire outer crust of the earth would do the shifting, not just one plate against the other. The effects would be stress related to the interplay of the crustal plates upon each other but would not pulverise the crusts because they would be moving as one system upon a liquid outer core.

When the crust shifts, stuff gets jarred around. The crust isn't a thin skim of dirt only a mile deep, floating on a gigantic, well-lubricated core substance. In order to move the crust, you have to break it off the rocks below. That shatters things.

* why ancient star maps still show Polaris as the pole star (which would NOT be true if the continents were zipping all around (since as we all know, massive earthquakes and crustal movements affect the Earth's wobble even if fairly slightly. A sudden mass rearrangement would drastically change the wobble.

The last recorded pole flip was before recorded history

Well, yes... I knew that. But I was assuming that you were proposing a catastrophic model that made the Earth less than 20,000 years old. Furthermore, all the papers you were citing as proof of the catastrophism state that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

If you have a DIFFERENT model, please state how old the Earth is and what your model is... and you really should avoid using the 6k earth papers as supporting evidence.


On to other, more intersting things:

I did, indeed, find a paper (one of several, but this one is cited frequently) that gives dates for the various pole reversals:
www.es.ucl.ac.uk...

So, we have:
Brunhes normal epoch: 730,000 years to now
the Matuyama epoch: -2,480,000 - 730,000 years BP ("before present")
Gauss epoch: 2,480,000 years BP and earlier. There are 2 100,000 subepochs here.

Here's a book chapter (PDF) with more detail: mahi.ucsd.edu...

Here's a very easy to read article on the dates of the mass extinctions:
www.findarticles.com...

So, comparing the data, we find that the dinosaurs lived through the last pole reversal (but not through the meteor impact.) That there is no evidence of a pole reversal during the First Extinction (440,000,000 years ago). The second die-off was around 320,000,000 years ago and there's another dieoff at 245,000,000 years

One of the Matuyama sub-epochs (called the Brunhes-Matuyama transition) was at 990,000 years (in this paper here, which is almost darn unreadable unless you REALLY like hard science and specifically on THIS page: www-odp.tamu.edu... ) --agin, no die-offs matching this.

If you struggle through their methodology section, you can see that there are a number of different measurements they use to confirm the age of the sample and the magnetic reversal.

There were no great extinctions then.

Originally posted by Tuatara
Byrd, the sea floor magnetic 'mapping' is very interesting. This tends to lead into the 'predictability' portion of this guesswork. The website www.es.ucl.ac.uk...

says "...with an average interval of around 300,000 years..." and gives a pretty good history lesson.

Thanks for the reference. That's what my sources say that I've been pointing to but they're awfully (AWFULLY) dry reading unless you just happen to adore hard science papers.

Now we need to go into business and devise the software packages which will correct all magnetically oriented data to a point of reference so that the military can still shoot it's missiles. Just joking but actually they would probably buy it.

Hmmmm! Hey! We could!! (actually, they don't use magnetic data. The pole has a horrible habit of wandering around and would throw their targeting off.)

And the tidbit of the Mammoths caught in a flash frost, eating greenery and it still in thier stomachs undigested, really intregues me.

It was a flood that they were caught in, and the carcasses were buried under the mud. When the ground froze over a period of years (and stayed frozen) they were buried in the permafrost. They've provided scientists with some GREAT research data, though!

I believe there is a great shift occuring now, and probably has repeated in the past. One scientist I can go by is Tesla, by what reading there is available out there in his research on the orginins of the magnetic field has been yeilded by our very own government by control. Part of this energy is equaded in our current MRI systems being used everyday. Having a friend who by coincidence found out majored in MRI programming and to this very day the fundamentals of magnetic energy is used today, just not many people know about it. Lightining as most may know comes from the ground, not the sky, a projected picture occures by using these forces. As the poles shifts in nature, alot of species are affected, as well human beings will be as well. There is so much more to learn about the magnetic forces and its movement today. The earths core energy is so complex and great in force that it can be underestimated in what forces lye beneath our soil. The mantel I agree is a force sheild one that consistantly energized the flow of magnetic forces over and above that. A mystery truly it is

[edit on 3-1-2005 by dsblueyes]

Jon:

Ok I'm picking through this Humphrey's paper.. and already I have found several major issues with the baseline assumptions...

Immediately after their creation, the atoms would begin to collide due to normal thermal motions. Within seconds these collisions would knock the nuclei out of their original alignment into a more random order. But the ordinary laws of electricity and magnetism would maintain the magnetic field by starting up a large electric current - billions of amperes - in the Earth's conductive interior.

Let us assume for a half a second that the starting point is correct. The above describe scenario just would not happen. Either the current is strong enough to hold the alignment of the atoms, or it isn't. If it is not, then the atoms would have an immediate effect on the magnetic/electrical field and nullify the rest of this.

In my article I calculated on the basis of the nuclear magnetism hypothesis that the Earth's field at creation was about eighteen times stronger than it is now. This value agrees to within five percent with the value we get by extrapolating the field's present decay rate 6000 years into the past, well within the experimental error.

Ummmm.. I won't even begin to get into what it wrong with that statement... won't even start to touch 6000 years as a 'creation date'... instead...

The magnetic moment of mw of an ortho molecule is 2.82 x l0-26 J/T (section 3). The total number of water molecules comprising the planet at creation is the planet's mass m (in kg) divided by the mass mm of a water molecule, 2.992 x 10-26 kg. The factor k then gives us the fraction of aligned molecules. Putting all this together into an equation gives us the planet's magnetic moment M, at creation (in J/T):
...(omitted for the sake of brevity)...

That is, every kilogram of water God created had a magnetic moment of nearly k joules per Tesla.

As I mentioned in the introduction, a large electric current would begin circulating in the planet's interior around the magnetic field axis, replacing the alignment of protons within seconds. The current would then decay exponentially.8 So the magnetic moment M at any time t after creation would be:

[edit to fix missing close quote tag]

His *entire* work is based around an assumption that the planet was *PURE* water at creation. Yet.. this contradicts his theory of the aligned molecules in the core as there would be no core in a pure water body.

Add to that, the planet has *never* been pure water and all you get is some phsyics applied to totally arbitrary values worth nothing.

As such if that is your source for the 'strength' of the earth's magnetic fields I would recommend tossing it out and finding an alternate source. This isn't to say the number is necessarily wrong (I'm far too lazy to research the correct value). However, the source is very seriously flawed, and logically, the number must also be view with a great deal of skepticism.

Also (this is general, honest advice, not a flame):

You need to do to math to determine if the earth's field is strong enough to interact with the plates (which are not entirely ferro-electric materials) enough to have any impact. I think if you do that math you would find that they are not. Even if the magnetic field is enormously strong, you are dealing with a more enormous amount of mass, with an even *MORE* enormous set of stored energies (rotational interia, etc.) (I am staying away from terms like Kinetic Energy on purpose in order to keep in the vane you wishes this discussion to be, i.e. non-technical)

Osiris




[edit on 3-1-2005 by otlg27]

Jon:

Just as an FYI I've done some research (ok, I'm not far too lazy.. just lazy)..

A field of one tesla is quite strong: the strongest fields available in laboratories are about 20 teslas, and the Earth's magnetic flux density, at its surface, is about 50 microteslas (�T). One tesla equals 10 000 gauss.

That exact quote is from www.unc.edu...

But the distinct source isn't relevant as that number is agreed upon in many other places. Interestingly that same definition there is handy for another reason:

One tesla is defined as the field intensity generating one newton of force per ampere of current per meter of conductor.

So assuming the ENTIRE surface of the planet was conductive (it's not), the total force exherted on the planet would be: 25,445,000,000 J. (assuming an earth's surface of 5.089e14 M2) So let's call it 25.5 Billion Joules of force..

Now looking here (love the hyper-physics site.. it has everything ever)...
hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu...

We find that only 5% of the earth crust is iron. Further, for the sake of arguement both sodium and potassium can behave as ferro-electric materials in certain forms, so let's throw in the 2.8 and 2.6 percent for them (rather err on the side of caution and all).. I'll also throw in the all others at 1.5%

So you get:
Iron 5%
Sodium 2.8%
Potassium 2.6%
All Others 1.5%
==================================
11.9% of the crust

(I don't believe that magnesium is, but I don't remember, but if it is it's more than accounted for by my GENEROUS use of all the Sodium and Calcium, which are certainly not all in a magnetically susceptable state)

So now you have a force to work with of 11.9% of the crust x 25.5B J.. or...

3.03B J

Still a lot of energy, but just how much is that.. (bearing in mind it's spread out across the entire earth)..

Well 1,000 KG of TNT has an explosive force of 4e9 or 4Billion Joules... That's a 1 Ton bomb.

To put that in perspective:

Typical Gulf War bomb 0.5 ton
Largest non-nuclear explosions 1-2 kilotons (kT)
Hiroshima bomb 15 kT
Typical U.S. nuclear bomb, 1997 200-500 kT
Typical U.S. Nuclear bomb, 1965 5 megatons (MT)
Mt. St. Helens eruption, 1980 10-20 MT
Meteor Crater impact (Arizona)20-40 MT
Largest nuclear weapon test (USSR, 1960)53 MT
San Francisco earthquake, 1906 1,000 MT
Recent Tsunami Quake, 2004 1,800MT
U.S./USSR total arsenals, 1981 12,000 MT
�Dinosaur Killer� impact (65 Myr ago)500 million MT

So.. even if the entire thing flipped tomorrow it wouldn't be CLOSE to enough power to move the plates around. Even if I'm off by a factor of 1 BILLION, it's still not enough to do anything major (move one plate a few feet, or all plates a tiny fraction of an inch)..

Regards,

Osiris