Earth's Magnetic Field Has Historically Shifted As Much As 6 Degrees Per Day

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"Earth's magnetic field is less reliable than you'd think. Rocks in an ancient lava flow in Oregon suggest that for a brief erratic span about 16 million years ago magnetic north shifted as much as 6 degrees per day. After little more than a week, a compass needle would have pointed toward Mexico City".

I haven't heard much discussion on this. I think it's funny when you hear the main sources say yes, these shifts have occurred, but always over thousands of years. I did a lot of research on this a few years ago, and at the time I had found very creditable scientific publication links (more so than a university page), although I can't seem to find these other sources any more...

But please, I'm not a doom n' gloomer saying the world is ending or anything....

Interesting, thanks for the information.

This might answer one of my questions, but we will have to wait and see how it pans out.

The left hemisphere shows that the field penetrating the inner core is opposed in polarity to the outer core, a feature completely unanticipated by theory. "The outer core polarity," explains Glatzmaier, "is continually trying to invade the inner core. Only when the whole field almost decays away, however [middle], does it finally have a chance to diffuse in. Once it does, the opposite polarity gets established. The inner core polarity is the stabilizing force, like an anchor, the slowest thing that can change."

This is nice they are proposing a mechanism by which this may occur.

Do they have a proposal on what mechanism causes this mechanism to occur?

Does the Sun's magnetism play any role in this?

That is the problem with super computers. They do not know how to deal with things we do not program them to deal with. Thus we are missing part of the equation from these models.

Although I do agree that making models is a good step towards at least attempting to explain or understand things.

Are you are confusing a change in a local magnetic field with a magnetic pole reversal?

From Jonathan Glen, one of the geologists involved:

Glen says that there is still much to learn about reversals and admits the possibility that the RTFC phenomenon may be localized. "The reversal process is more complex than these rapid directional changes. This is one place in the world where we've observed this. The other is Steens Mountain. We don't know how extensive these kinds of fluctuations are around the globe. There may be localized eddies. Smaller currents produce fields only locally, which you might not see on the other side of the globe. During a transition, these local features might dominate."

www.earthexplorer.com...

Yes, such localized rapid changes could occur during a transition but overall the evidence indicates that global reversals occur over the span of thousands of years. However, there is no evidence of such rapid shifts happening today.

reply to post by Phage


Hey man, great article.. Material I've looked for in the past but didn't find. 1 degree per week, still pretty crazy fast in my opinion. This place we live on is amazing...