Originally posted by Essan
Originally posted by GrassyKnoll
I'm not saying I believe that the Earth will reverse rotation I am just saying the posibility needs to be discussed rationally.
But it's not a rational idea. And if for some reason it did happen, so what? All life on Earth would perish. Except maybe a few deep oceanic and sub surface microbes etc.
We'd be back where we started 3,500 million years ago.
(I think a lot of people fail to appreciate just how fast the Earth is rotating - over 1,000mph at the equator)
It's only a rational idea if a large enough magnetic/gravitational disturbance were to occur and affect the earth.
As for all life virtually being lost; I don't believe it would be. Much life would be lost and immense geologic disturbances would occur but life is resilient. It would all depend on how violent the geological disturbance are and how prepared humans are to deal with them.
One thing though that stands out and disturbs me; during a magnetic pole reversal the earth's magnetic field strength approaches zero. According to wikipedia geomagnetic reversals happen on a timescale of 0.1 - 1 million years. The last known reversal was about 170,000 yrs ago.
While there has definitely been a large geomagnetic excursion the past 100 yrs or so...a full geomagnetic reversal in the 21 st century is by no means impossible nor improbable. It's the dynamo effect that has me concerned.
On a small laboratory scale dynamo's will reverse rotation during magnetic pole reversals. Another factor yet to be mentioned in this thread is ice ages; the reasons for them , their physical manifestation and affectation of the earth.
