According to MNN, the magnetic north pole shifted 40 miles last year, signaling that we might be in the midst of a complete pole reversal.
Pole reversal?
- Post author:Erich Vieth
- Post published:March 11, 2011
- Post category:Science
- Post comments:27 Comments
Erich Vieth
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.
The article makes several interesting points.
One, the poles may (not very high probability) be heading toward one of the infrequent reversals. BTW: These shifts are useful for archaeological and geological dating because they are a well recorded planet wide phenomenon, measurable everywhere.
Two, it is a headache for aviation because, back when magnetic compasses were the only all weather way of finding north, they standardized runway labels to the magnetic north rather than polar north. Another case where refusing to change a legacy decision is a headache for everyone.
Three, the author obviously didn't check with geologists or archaeologists, because he openly wonders whether magnetically oriented wildlife can adapt. As it has every other time the poles have shifted.
It finally concludes with a quote from an actual scientist who says,
Continuing the trend of "science" reporting breathlessly exposing a possible (but unlikely) dramatic event, and then burying the realistic view beyond most people's attention span.
And the anti-spam word was "wow".
The current pattern of pole movement does not indicate a continual steady state change of 40 miles per year. What we are observing would indicate an oscillation pattern that will not eventually over time cause a pole reversal by itself.
When 40 miles per year is extrapolated over 10,000 years, that amounts to 400,000 miles, which is over 16 laps around the earth at that rate.
There has appeared to have been an acceleration of the magnetic pole movement over the modern dates of it being measured. The movement of the magnetic pole seems to follow the same pattern as the alignment between the geographic and magnetic axes. I believe the current Magnetic Pole has moved through an equilibrium position and is now moving towards Russia. The rate of motion however will start to show signs of deceleration which should be obvious that it is not going to reverse itself unless a major catastrophe occurs.
The Earth's rotational axis normally has a"wobble" around the north star but this wobble is very small right now indicating the planet is at more of an equilibrium position than it has been in a while.
When the earth's inner molten materials move out of synchronization with the mantle and crust, this is bound to create heightened disturbances such as earth quakes and volcanic activity.
The misalignment of the magnetic pole axis with the outer geographic oriented mantle and crust axis may be what is responsible for much of the stress and strain upon the tectonic plates. Both decelerations and accelerations in the movement between the alignment of these axes would be signs of significant forces at work at the boundary materals in the mantle.
It is believed that the Earth's magnetic field is created by the fluid flux of the molten materials in the cores of the planet. Potentially any disruption or change to the convection flow patterns of the materials creating this magnetic flux in the molten cores would produce changes in earth's magnetic fields.
A large impactor could not only alter the crust but could also disrupt the flow patterns of materials in the crust and mantle which could send shock waves into the core(s) that would only dissipate and dampen over time. This may have happened in the past and what we witness now in the pole movements are only slight gradual changes alost to the point of nearly being undetectable change.
When the earth geographic mantle/crustal axis is knocked out of kilter, the magnetic axis will respond to conserve rotational inertia like a spinning top it starts an ossillation pattern. The existent and remaining ossillations may simply be a indication of how long it has taken for the shockwaves to gradually lessen their impact upon the flow of the molten materials that are producing the earth's magnetic field.
Thanks, Dan.
Karl, please do some science reading from the last quarter century. "It is believed" in some older text books that our magnetic field is produced by the rotation of the Earth.
But it is understood that the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field is merely supported by the rotating iron (and lanthanide and actinide) core. The field itself is dynamically produced (as in dynamo) by the steady ion wind from the sun. Much like a smooth bore bullet will spin up in some random direction by the passing wind (thus making its path unpredictable).
And you really have no conception of the scale of the materials involved in meteorite and asteroid impacts. Visualize an ice bullet hitting a thin layer of ice on Lake Eerie at any angle you wish to try. How far do you think the whole ice sheet will move? What shape do you think the crater will have? Now go try it. Every experiment done shows that all craters from single impactors are round. Any angle.
And as Mark and others have tried to point out to you, any impact containing enough energy to move any noticeable fraction of a tectonic plate will also kill off most of the larger life forms on the planet.
I did not say that the rotation of the earth produced our magnetic field. I stated that the magnetic field is produced by the fluid flux of materials in the cores. The rotation of the planet is just what manages to keep the fluid flux fairly consistent.
I have enough of a clue about the scale of what I'm discussing to know that the damages would indeed be catastrophic and that the changes to earth's crustal surfaces and magnetic field would be easier described by uniformitarians as having happened gardually over billions of years.
Karl,
My understanding is that the magnetic reversal proceeds with a non linear rate, with the rate slowing when the magnetic poles are near the rotational axis, and shifting more rapidly near the equator.
Another common mistake by most laymen is failing to recognize that the electrical characteristics are not tightly coupled to the fluidic characteristics in the core.
There are several charts showing the field reversals over the last 170 million years in the Wiki article on Geomagnetic reversal. They show charts of measured field flips at scales of the past million years (since the last reversal, shows wandering of north pole from current norm), the past 5 million, and the past 170 million years.
And the sources are cited, should you care to check.
Dan,
Of course you already know I don't believe in millions of years of "continental drift" anymore than you don't believe in impactors being able to apply horizontal momentum into the crust and tectonic plates.
Nearly the entire Atlantic sea floor spreading could have occured from a catastrophe that nearly no air breating living thing on earth could have survived.
Karl, it isn't that I don't "believe" in your alluring yet easily disproved assertion. I trust in centuries of observations backed by a solid and consistent theoretical/mathematical framework that itself is constantly under test. I trust in methodologies that result in data that anyone can reproduce. I trust in a system of checks and balances that is dedicated to proving ideas wrong, and therefore trust that ideas that keep coming out of this gauntlet as correct are probably true.
If the Atlantic spread happened suddenly, why do samples from various distances from the rift show a steadily increasing age, using several independent methods of dating? And also why is the current measured rate of spread consistent with those ages?
We've been over this before (see Deep Water Effects on Radioactivity)
Dan,
The assumption that "continental drift" can move tectonic plates horizontally but that large impactors at small angles can only leaves circular craters and not move tectonic plates leaves reason aside as far as I see it.
As to why the rocks have an apparent older age as you move away from the mid atlantic ridge I can offer at least three possible explanations.
All of these reasons accept that there is a progression of age from younger to older as you move away from the ocean ridge.
1) The rocks really could be as "old" as the estimates say they are, even though it has been shown that the dating of molten rock material is notoriously fraught with serious assumptive bias errors. The methods used to make confirmations are relative techniques. Molten materials from lava flows routinely get re-interpreted when ever someone was an actual eye witness in real time.
2) The rocks do show a steadily decreasing ratio in the amount of lead to uranium, but this does not necessarily require that the lead present was only there as a result of uranium changing into lead once the rocks were laid down. It could simply mean that the ratio of earlier materials that emerged from down under came up with a higher percentage of the less dense element first. Uranium is about 70% more dense than lead and one would expect it to be found in higher concentrations at a greater depth in molten materials. The materials that oozed up out of the ridge should have been at least somewhat density dependent, with the lighter ones coming up first.
3. The last reason as to why there is an appearance of great age (millions of years) as opposed to much less age (days, weeks and months and years) is necessarily based upon the model one is using to approach the investigation.
I think what Karl is attempting to argue is along the lines that God created everything a few thousand years ago, then Satan came along stuck all these fossil thingies in place to to deceive all the people into forsaking religion in general.
This is typical of the arguments posed by many creationists. The problem seems to be that often the physical evidence is contrary to the supernatural answer, an exception is added and cumulative effect over time is that the mythology becomes a twisteddd, comlex of explanations of exceptions.
OF course, this says nothing about the periodic re-polarization of the geomagnetic field.
Karl, the plates move because of continuous forces applied from below (magma currents). Your surprise at that is much like as if you doubt that a semi trailer can be moved across town by a tractor, yet are sure that it would be moved there by a bullet.
We have also repeatedly gone around with your incomprehension of nuclear chemistry. I understand that you don't understand, and won't read up on it.
For example, uranium and lead have very different chemistry and widely different melting points. They are not found together in nature, except that lead (Pb<sup>206</sup> and Pb<sup>207</sup>) are daughter products of the Uranium decay series.
And the underlying principles of isotopic dating models has been tested for about 80 years by generations of eager brilliant scholars trying their best to show that it is wrong (and get their Nobel prize). No luck, so far.
I trust the process.
Dan,
You reveal the depth of your assumptive bias in stating the only way lead is found with uranium in nature is because uranium somewhere decayed into lead.
Do you also hold that the only way Lead 206 and 207 exists or is produced in nature is as the result of a millions of years process?
So does it follow that very little if any Lead 206 or 207 was initially produced during whatever cosmological model you favor like the Big Bang or something similar?
Are you also saying that nature favors forming uranium quickly but Lead 206 and 207 is only formed extremely slowly through the step by step processes described in the decay series beginning with Uranium 238?
I assume you also believe that the atoms heavier than Iron have been formed from the explosion of Supernova and neutron capture.
Why should nature highly favor the formation of Uranium through some quick process, but essentially only favor the formation of a more stable material through the decay of the quickly formed more massive and radioactive element?
Here is an other question – What in the world keeps elements from absorbing random neutrons over a million year period, thus not changing the expected decay series?
Dan,
The location of the sea floor spreading would have been determined by something other than spontaneous fault lines.
A large decapitated Impactor could not only cause a crater but could also crack the egg shell through which the ooze could emerge from underneath.
If you place the Caribbean Tectonic plate over the turn in the Mid Atlantic Ridge there is a model that can show how Pangaea was separated and the sea floor spreading initiated.
Karl, I did not say that lead is primarily produced by uranium. I said that lead is not naturally found in the same places as uranium, except as trapped daughter isotopes. There are several other Isotopes of lead that are usually found where lead naturally accumulates, but those isotopes are not found near uranium in the same order of concentration.
Also, uranium-lead is not the only, nor even the primary dating method for the sea floor. The Atlantic sea floor is too young (~180 Mya just off the continental shelves).
Again, Chixulub is on the North American plate, not the Caribbean.
And according to Decapitated Impactors in the Laboratory and on the Planets (Harvard astrophysics, 1990), a decapitated impactor transmits even less lateral energy into the crust than relatively vertical impacts.
Dan,
Thanks for the article.
The article from Harvard Astrophysics does state that for decapitated impactors there is less energy loss in the initial cratering. But then there is also an all around general lower loss of kinetic energy in the first impact and not just lateral energy losses.
The article also states that there is less loss of kinetic energy in the first impact because of the amount of energy that a decapitated impactor does send on further as ricocheted debris materials. These materials are not insignificant amounts of matter and energy and in some cases these materials could theoretically even be sent into a low orbit around the mass it originally imapcted.
My concern with most of this has been that you consistently harp on the kinetic energy and the explosive nature of the collision, but you have yet to address the conservation of momentum required in any hit and stick collision for a low angle impactor. Any ricocheted materials (matter) whether they hit immediately close or even a ways down range will still be imparting some amount of lateral momentum while it probably continues to be vaporized in further cratering activities.
From how I see it, the path traced out across the Caribbean sea floor by the Chixculub impactor and associated ricocheted debris is the only explanation we have for the enigmatic nature of the entire area.
Karl, again check your numbers. The moment of impact (mass times velocity) is quickly absorbed by the planet (mass times velocity). A typical bolide comes in at between the escape velocity of the Earth and of the Sun at the Earth (11-42km/s). Divide that speed by the mass ratio of the bolide to the planet (~10<sup>18</sup> for Chicxulub) and you are looking at a resulting differential rotation speed measured in microns per year. Do the math. Really, sit down with a pencil, and see for yourself.
And who says there is any geological enigma in that area? I mean besides those explained by the impact 65 MYa?
Dan,
I have never stated that I was looking for a significant permanent change to to the rotation of the earth. I have been suggesting that the tectonic plates could slip and slide around on top of the mantle as a result of lateral momentum imparted to the crust from low angle oblique impacts.
The continental crust is a tiny fraction of the entire mass of the earth and thus it could shift around in response to an impulse and soon there after be rotating back in sync with the core(s) .I have simply been considering that surface crust can move somewhat independently from the mantle, and not only from forces inside of the earth.
Karl, so you suggest that temporarily, whatever plate you think may have had something to do with the Arabian plate may have been jolted up to tens, or even thousands of microns per year before it dropped back?
We were discussing any possible physical cause for the sun and moon to appear to stand still in the sky for a day and then resuming their natural motions without anyone feeling the ground move or a change in the weather. This argument is beyond silly.
Dan,
There are actually two matters being bantered around here at the moment, partly due to my not checking carefully which thread I am posting to.
The first is the interpretation of existent paleometric data of magnetic field change of some magnitude and duration.
You as well as others don't believe in a catastrophic origin nor a rapid formation of paleometric evidence. I do not agree.
I don't believe in "continental drift" as being responsible for the formation of the Mid Atlantic Ridge, nor the majority of sea floor spreading. I believe that a large impactor both cracked the shell and gave these separated pieces of crust some lateral horizontal velocities as well as providing a conduit for the release of increased pressure upon the mantle as magma oozed up through the cracks the impactor created.
I also believe that any internal disruption to the equilibrium of the motion of the magnetic materials in the molten core of the planet could in either a gradual or a rapid reversal of the magnetic fileds of the earth. Iron core materials that had magnetic flux changing due to a physical oscillations produced from a large impactor could explain how the ocean floor appears to have such a large number of "reversals" in the paleometrics.
The other matter being discussed was from a different thread and that concerned what would be needed to physically for the Sun and Moon to appear to slow in their paths across the sky so that a day would have a longer than normal number of hours.
I had conceeded that Chixculub would have been much to violent to have enabled a single days events.
I then stated that the only other reasonable physical manner for this (the sun standing still) to have occurred would have been for a large external magnetic field to have created an induction field counter to the natural one that the sun/earth system exhibits. A strong enough field could work to oppose the ongoing interactions that normally exist between the earth and sun and this could have slowed the outer core and crust to the place that the normal rotational velocities could have decreased temporarily until the system equibrated again later in the day.
Karl, there are several well mapped plates all moving in well documented directions at well measured (if irregular) speeds. And this was all done within the last half century, when the massive evidence for tectonics finally overcame the common sense (traditional understanding) that continents don't move on their own.
There are also quite a few major impact sites known. There are also documented mass extinctions from other known and unknown causes. Again, it was only in the last century or so that massive evidence overcame the common sense (traditional understanding) that rocks don't fall from the sky. It's only a few decades since the first anomalous iridium layer was found, and finally traced to an impact.
The changing magnetic field of the planet is also well documented from many physical sites by many competing labs (all trying to prove the others wrong). These changes are so well recorded that they are used to refine results from other dating methods, where applicable.
Core rotation is not related to magnetic field direction or strength. Plate movement is not related to magnetic field orientation or strength. Sure, there are local anomalies, on the order of a percent or so. The same goes for mass anomalies. All very well mapped, or GPS wouldn't be reliable.
And any field strength on the order of the Earth's magnetic field would take billions of years to slow our rotation enough for anyone to notice. It's actually a very weak field compared to fridge magnets. The moon slows us down much faster.
That you don't believe in the sum total of many millions of careful and overlapping observations made by competing observers in many diverse fields of study over hundreds of years is apparently due to your faith. That you don't believe the current theories that best explain all those observations is also attributable to your faith. But don't pretend that your feeling of doubt is comparable to scientific skepticism. You'd need evidence for that.
Dan: As we all know all-too-well by now, Karl is highly motivated to not believe carefully gathered data when it threatens he belief in ethereal sentience. I don't think it's possible to have a meaningful conversation with Karl on a scientific topic in light of this single-minded motivation.
Sorry, Karl. You seem like a likable guy but I've given up on pretending to have conversations with you on issues where your faith collides with science.
Dan and Erich,
You are both correct in your perspective of how I approach the interpretations of uniformitarian scientists.
I do not believe someone (or even a collective group)simply because they say a process appears slow today therefore it has been just as slow for the past millions or billions of years.
It simply comes down to what I said quite a while ago. Catastrophic change to this planet is evidenced in ways that uniformitarians discount whenever they are unwilling to consider just how much huge catastrophies would influence wide scale changes a on a planetary wide basis. These large rapid changes would cascade into evidence for short times frames and not long ones. This is our fundamental difference over the meaning of the data.
We both believe in large scale cascading effects, your are from inside the earth system, mine are from outside of the earth's system so you consider them supernatural.
Dan,
I didn't say core rotation produces the magnetic field, but it is clear that existent iron domains in the crust and mantle(which are rotating) could be affected by interaction with a strong external or internal magnetic field opposing the steady state long term natural rotation that it possesses.
Disruptions to the convextion currents in the outer core do produce magnetic field changes in the external earth's magnetosphere.
The earths's internal field is produced by convection currents in the outer core which just so happens to be rotating with the rest of the earth.
http://mb-soft.com/public/tecto2.html
Dan and Erich,
There has been detectible and measurable changes to the magnetosphere of the earth before the major earthquakes in recent years. This is how animals are aware of the danger before it strikes.
You can look this up for yourself.
Alaska and the West Coast of America are next in line.
Germany is taking their reactors off line, we should consider doing the same, for safety reasons.
http://www.suite101.com/content/the-poleshift–an…
http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=…
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/20/951/Are_We_in_a…