Solar Pole Flip Already?

I just found this article, and have not done a lot of research on it, but will do so later tonight and tomorrow. I do find it pretty interesting, and correlates to the very unusual solar flare activity in the past few months (the sun should be entering an 11 year phase of relative solar tranquility, but is far more active than usual), as well as the geomagnetic storms that I have seen recently (see the latest post on worldwide seismic activity.)

If anyone has any info on this, please post. I will post anything new I find on the subject.

Pole Flip on the Sun
24-Apr-2003



There's evidence that the Earth's magnetic poles are about to flip. What's interesting is this: it's already happened on the Sun. Like the Earth, it has a north and south pole. But for nearly a month, beginning in March 2000, the Sun's south magnetic pole faded, and a north pole emerged to take its place, so the Sun had two north poles. By May 2000, the south pole was back to its usual position. Then in 2001, the solar magnetic field flipped and the poles swapped positions. They've stayed at way ever since.
"It sounds impossible, but it's true," says space physicist Pete Riley. "In fact, it's a fairly normal side-effect of the solar cycle." Strange events like this happen to the Sun every 11 years around solar maximum. Physicists aren't sure how this pole shift will affect the Earth. Riley says, "The Sun's magnetic field permeates the entire solar system."

The "current sheet" is the surface where the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field changes from plus (north) to minus (south). "We call it the 'current sheet,'" says Riley, "because an electrical current flows there..."The sheet extends from the Sun past the orbit of Pluto." Usually it circles the Sun's equator in an even circle, but during the pole switch it changed shape and became irregular. This could be a problem because the current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays hitting the Earth.

The current sheet also helps prevent space storms, which can cause electronics on satellites to short circuit and power grids on Earth to fail. They can also be dangerous to astronauts.

www.unknowncountry.com...

hummm very interesting...

Interesting read Dragon....

Kept upto scratch on the local seismic tremors but for some reason we had a funky episode a few nights ago..will email you on outcome of findings!

Good read though

DR, I know what RavenStarr is saying. NMSZ has had several small quakes this week ..nothing too bad..like 1.5 to 2.0 but thats not bad because the fault is buried under so much glacial outwash. Its actually been active all summer averaging at least one quake of this mag per week.


Once the poles shift, my compass is gonna suck isn't it?

Well, it appears to be legit, even NASA is saying that the solar poles flipped:

science.nasa.gov...

www.usatoday.com...

www.wonderquest.com...

As far as the earths magnetic poles flipping, we have no idea when that may happen, although there has been a lot of reports that the earths magnetic poles are destabilizing. Astrocreep in response to your question, yes, magnetic compasses are going to become unusable.

A magnetic pole reversal does NOT happen overnight... in general, the magnetic field subsides in strength to about 2 orders of magnitude below its normal strength for about 20-50 years, and then comes back to normal strength in the opposite orientation. At least that is what is shown in paleomagnetic studies that I have read.

www.70south.com...

www.70south.com...

www.ananova.com...

Astrocreep, how is NMSZ activity compared to past activity over say the last 10 years? Increasing?

DR, not sure about the last ten years but I'll see if I can get some geologist at UK scratching their heads about it. I started receiving e-mail notifications from Univ. of Tenn. in June of last year when they had 5.0 quake there. Since then (June 18th 2002) I've received notifications for 99 smaller quakes in the NMSZ.

Three years ago, something weird happened to the Sun.

Normally, our star, like Earth itself, has a north and a south magnetic pole. But for nearly a month beginning in March 2000, the Sun's south magnetic pole faded, and a north pole emerged to take its place. The Sun had two north poles.

"It sounds impossible, but it's true," says space physicist Pete Riley of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in San Diego. "In fact, it's a fairly normal side-effect of the solar cycle." Every 11 years around solar maximum, the Sun's magnetic field goes haywire as the Sun's underlying magnetic dynamo reorganizes itself. The March 2000 event was simply a part of that upheaval.

"The south pole never really vanished," notes Riley. It migrated north and, for a while, became a band of south magnetic flux smeared around the Sun's equator. By May 2000 the south pole had returned to its usual spot near the Sun's southern spin axis--but not for long. In 2001 the solar magnetic field completely flipped; the south and north poles swapped positions, which is how they remain now.

Using a supercomputer named Blue Horizon and data from spacecraft (especially NASA's ACE and ESA-NASA's Ulysses) Riley and colleagues are studying how these complex changes can affect our planet. "The Sun's magnetic field permeates the entire solar system," explains Riley. "It interacts with Earth and is the primary driver of space weather."

The vast region of space filled by the Sun's magnetic field is called the heliosphere. All nine planets orbit inside it. But the biggest thing in the heliosphere is not a planet, or even the Sun. It's the current sheet--a sprawling surface where the polarity of the Sun's magnetic field changes from plus (north) to minus (south). "We call it the 'current sheet,'" says Riley, "because an electrical current flows there, about 10-10 amps/m2." The filament of an ordinary light bulb carries sixteen orders of magnitude more amps/m2. But what the current sheet lacks in local amperage, it makes up in sheer size. The sheet is 10,000 kilometers thick and extends from the Sun past the orbit of Pluto. "The entire heliosphere is organized around this giant sheet."

Ordinarily, the current sheet circles the Sun's equator like a wavy skirt around a ballerina's waist. But during the double north pole event of March 2000, the current sheet was radically altered: The waviness increased. Irregularities appeared. Its topology "morphed" from a ballerina's skirt to a giant seashell.

Interesting to a solar physicist, perhaps...

...but ordinary people should care about this, too. First because of energetic cosmic rays: The current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays traveling through the heliosphere. Cosmic rays can't cross the sheet; instead they flow along it. The shape of the current sheet therefore determines how many cosmic rays strike Earth.

Space weather is another reason: As Earth orbits the Sun, it dips in and out of the undulating current sheet. On one side the Sun's magnetic field points north (toward the Sun), on the other side it points south (away from the Sun). South-pointing solar magnetic fields tend to cancel Earth's own magnetic field. Solar wind energy can then penetrate the local space around our planet and fuel geomagnetic storms.

Geomagnetic storms are both good and bad--bad because they can cause electronics on satellites to short circuit and power grids on Earth to fail; good because they spark auroras, which sky watchers enjoy. "If we could make an accurate daily map of the current sheet, then we could do a better job predicting the onset of these storms."

There's a problem, though: the current sheet is invisible. "We can't see it through an optical telescope," he says, "which means we have to calculate where it is." Riley and his colleagues have developed a computer program to do that. The input data are measurements of the Sun's surface magnetic field; these are taken daily by telescopes on Earth. The program applies the equations of resistive magnetohydrodynamics to calculate how the electrified solar wind drags that magnetic field through the solar system. A supercomputer--Riley uses the Blue Horizon IBM SP3 at the San Diego Supercomputing Center--is required to execute the code.

The episode of the double north pole provided a key test of their software. "We calculated the shape of the current sheet for a Sun with two north poles," recalls Riley. "The result looked like a conch shell ... more than a billion kilometers wide."

But how could he check his results?

NASA's Ulysses spacecraft provided the crucial data. In early 2000, Ulysses was about 600 million kilometers from the Sun -- perfect for testing the conch model. As the spacecraft cruised through space at 10 km/s it crossed the current sheet twice, once in March and again in April 2000. Onboard magnetometers recorded the crossings, which were in good agreement with Riley's predictions.

Using only measurements of the Sun's surface magnetic field, his software had successfully predicted magnetic fields in interplanetary space 600 million kilometers away. Impressive.

"It has taken us ten years to develop this capability," says Riley. "We would like to improve it even more by including measurements of the temperature, density and speed of the solar wind--parameters that we merely estimate now. Our ultimate goal is to provide up to 4 days advance warning of geomagnetic storms."

Testing that next-generation software will require more data from Ulysses. The spacecraft follows a high-looping orbit where it can see the Sun's polar regions--something no other spacecraft can do. "This unique trajectory has allowed scientists for the first time to fully explore the heliosphere in three dimensions," says Riley.

A supercomputer on Earth. A spacecraft hundreds of millions of kilometers away. Working together they're getting us ready for the next time the Sun sprouts an extra north pole ... or something stranger yet.

Still currently under a Class M Flare, and active Geomagnetic Storm....

www.maj.com...

Small to moderate rumblings.... (calm before the storm?)

aslwww.cr.usgs.gov...

www.iris.edu...

HAARP is VERY active today...

137.229.36.30...

Isn't the solar magnetic fields cyclus apprx. 12 years long?

And I never heard about the sun having a south pole. It has a north pole, but not a south pole, that's what Ive learned, something that has been subject to much headscratching with many astronomers and puzzled many physics experts.

I'm not an expert on this, I might add.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

"There's evidence that the Earth's magnetic poles are about to flip. "

Maybe HAARP is used to help anchor the poles so they don't move durring times of great stress?

Maybe HAARP is used to help anchor the poles so they don't move durring times of great stress? Posted by Energy Wave

Its possible I guess, but doing so would take an enormous amount of energy.

Sounds sort of like the plot for "Core" doesnt it? Maybe we are being told something??

The Earth's solar flip is actually a prophecy of the Mayans, Sumarians, etc...whether the flip is to occur on May 15 leading to the last year when Nibiru comes in 2012, or if 2012 is the year of the flip, its recorded in ancient civilization prophecies as the birth(or leading to) of a new age/cycle, where we ascend from a physical, linear state to an astral state...and lots of science surrounds it. Check out the 2012 front: www.diagnosis2012.co.uk... & www.mayanmajix.com...

also, I hope no one supports HAARP...its the kind of thing Montauk would've been perfecting. Electromagnetic manipulation & mind control, anywhere from weather to energies to gravity, etc..."They" don't want the "ascension" to occurr, so they use things like HAARP to manipulate such a thing...

[Edited on 28-4-2003 by Semuri]

Nah. If you've ever compared the output of that thing, you'll find that radio stations that carry Howard Stern have more power than HAARP. And I don't think anyone's proposing that Howard Stern is going to stop anything.

Nah. If you've ever compared the output of that thing, you'll find that radio stations that carry Howard Stern have more power than HAARP. And I don't think anyone's proposing that Howard Stern is going to stop anything. Posted by Byrd

The average FM commercial broadcast is between 100,000 and 500,000 watts output. HAARP is publicly rated for 15 megawatts of output, and has been monitored unofficially with a max recorded output of 3.5 gigawatts.

Is this a small amount for affecting something as massive as the earth? Yes. However, if you look into some of the research documented by Nikola Tesla, you dont need a massive influx of energy, you just need a little lead time. All you have to do is establish a standing resonance wave, and tune all subsequent waves to reinforce it... when resonance waves reinforce each other, they multiply geometrically, and within a matter of days, you have sufficient energy built up to trigger seismic events.

I've just watched a very interesting TV program (Magnetic Flip Channel 4) on the possibility of the Earth magnetic poles flipping.

By boring into old lava flows scientists have been able to see how often the poles have shifted.On average the Earths poles flip every 200,000 years but it has been 780,000 years since the poles last flipped.
On one 5 foot length of lava flow it was shown conclusively that the poles had flipped in the difference in time it had taken the bottom and top of this section to cool and solidify,probably a couple of days at most,in between,while the shift was taking place, the magnetic pole had shifted eratically.

Pole shifts on the Earth are preceded by a reduction in the Earths magnetic field.Currently our magnetic field has reduced 10% in the last three hundred years but this is from the strongest recorded magnetic field readings in the history of the Earth.Our Magnetic field is still not at as lower level as when other flips have taken place but if the rate of reduction continues then we will reach that point in around 200 years.
Computer models that have only recently been able to replicate a flip show that another phenomena that precedes a flip is the increase in magnetic anomolies around the Earth.When the Magnetic field is strong and stable positive and negative electro-magnetic fields are divided distinctly along the equator with a wave rippling effect where they meet.Computer models show large areas of positive field energy developing in the negative field and vice versa as the field weakens before the flip.Large anomolies have been discovered today and are being monitored.

After each flip the magnetic dynamo,which is the Earth core,regenerates and the magnetic field once again becomes stronger.