The Recent Changes In Earth's Magnetic Field (esa.int) 170
Europe's Swarm constellation of satellites have documented bigger-than-expected changes that have been occurring in the Earth's magnetic field. Earlier this year SpaceWeather.com reported that the data show clearly that "the field has weakened by about 3.5% at high latitudes over North America, while it has strengthened about 2% over Asia. The region where the field is at its weakest -- the South Atlantic Anomaly -- has moved steadily westward and weakened further by about 2%. These changes have occurred over the relatively brief period between 1999 and mid-2016."
Science writer Robert Zimmerman reports: It was already known that the field has weakened globally by about 10% since the 19th century. These changes appear to be part of that generally weakening. Some scientists have proposed that this is the beginning of an overall flip of the magnetic field's polarity, something that happens on average about every 300,000 years and last occurred 780,000 years ago. At the moment, however, we have no idea if this theory is correct.
Science writer Robert Zimmerman reports: It was already known that the field has weakened globally by about 10% since the 19th century. These changes appear to be part of that generally weakening. Some scientists have proposed that this is the beginning of an overall flip of the magnetic field's polarity, something that happens on average about every 300,000 years and last occurred 780,000 years ago. At the moment, however, we have no idea if this theory is correct.
Build a wall! (Score:1, Troll)
The sun doesn't send its best particles. They bring in ionisation, they bring in cancer, they destroy our power grid. And some, I assume, are good particles.
We need to build a wall to protect ourselves from these particles, and we need to build it quick.
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"We need to build a wall to protect ourselves from these particles, and we need to build it quick."
And we'll make the Solarians or Venusians or Martians pay for it.
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At least get the quote close to being correct: We need to build a beaauuuuuuttifuuul wall to protect ourselves from these particles, and we need to build it quick.
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"and that damned magnetic field made my hair go funny."
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Rogue one contained quite many references to that movie, quite stunning.
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Not nearly as many as Trump supporters who think the Earth's "magnetic field" is pseudo-science being pushed by George Soros-funded geologists trying to advance a marxist agenda.
I mean, if there really was a "magnetic field" than why does a pound of iron fall at the same rate as a pound of feathers? Can't answer that one, can you? Boom! Chinese hoax. Sad!
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They don't fall at the same rate. A pound of iron always falls faster than a pound of feather try it.
That moon thing was a hoax to get science to lie to us
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FAKE NEWS!!
I ground up the feathers into a fine dust and compressed them into a cube. They fell at the same rate. Magnetism does not exist.
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I have no mod points. I love your posts. Please never stop posting.
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They don't fall at the same rate. A pound of iron always falls faster than a pound of feather try it.
Actually.... that depends entirely how they are packaged, which affects whether the size of the package and total buoyancy will be different, and whether they are falling in vacuum, or what kind of atmosphere.
climate change (Score:1)
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"so weather climate change may not be from my truck afterall? "
Of course not. Changes in the Earth's magnetic field are known to be caused by Microsoft software. You can help by switching to Unix and by supporting further research to refine the settled science in this area.
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t is a bit harsh of a suggestion to switch to Un*x when a merfe reboot of your windows system would do the trick!
Or a reinstall ... ...
Don't forget to wipe the RegistrY
Time to brush up on those occult skills. (Score:1)
It's entertaining to imagine that when / if the field flips in our lifetime electrons as we know them cease to function, and become instead an extension of the mind.
May your Magick be strong, lest you be devoured by the hoard!
It's anthropogenic ... (Score:2)
... because humans have mined ores that are classified as diamagnetic paramagnetic ferromagnetic ferrimagnetic antiferromagnetic and moved them from their natural distributions into localized concentrations.
Pesky spaceship (Score:2)
The aliens' ship is in a geostationary orbit over the south Atlantic, powered by the earth's magnetic field. Obviously.
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Johannesburg.
Wait a few weeks... (Score:5, Funny)
Once Trump takes over, we'll have the strongest, most powerful magnetic field in history right here in 'murica! It's all part of his day 1 plan for making America Great Again!
How? (Score:2)
I thought our magnetic field was caused by our molten iron core. Which is not something to undergo rapid changes.
Re:How? (Score:5, Informative)
I thought our magnetic field was caused by our molten iron core. Which is not something to undergo rapid changes.
It is called Geomagnetic reversal [wikipedia.org]. The cause is still up for debate, but the magnetic field is produced precisely because the molten core is not static. Have a look at the Wikipedia page for a summary of the phenomenon.
HA! (Score:2, Funny)
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No, most everyone survived due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere providing a buffer.
Conspiracy theory (Score:2)
Not intended to be funny, but I count on any comments being.
No cause for alarm. (Score:2)
Lets see what Dr Hans Zarkov, formerly of NASA has to say about it.
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The magnetic field out of alignment?
Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field During ... (Score:1)
Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field During the Genesis Flood
http://www.icr.org/article/rev... [icr.org]
Obviously manmade (Score:2)
Weaker Magnetic Field Protection = High Mutation % (Score:2)
Surely the weaker magnetic field will result in more mutations and therefore more aggressive evolution during this period. More cancer, more deaths too.
We'll know .. (Score:2)
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It flipped the votes form hilly to trump
Re:another variable that effects weather (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. I had considered coming here to joke about whether the anti-science deniers would come out of the woodwork to claim that the magnetic field wasn't changing at all and they were just after funding, but it looks like the bullshitters are still fixated on climate change.
that is equally as important as co2, but climate change pushers put all the burden on man.
We can't change the magnetic field (as far as we know), but we can change what we do to the environment. Nobody has ever said that it is only man who is causing climate change, but only man can actually do something about it.
i'm no climate change denier...
Yes you are
i just know ther is way more to this than the gov't and most gov't funded scientists pushing the man made global warming agenda would lead you to believe. follow the $.
The problem with that theory is that when the deniers fund their own study [businessinsider.com.au], it also comes to the same conclusion; that climate change is real and that the carbon dioxide curve is the best match to global warming. So following the $ is meaningless, unless you can show evidence that anyone has falsified their climate research to get funding. If not, then there is no basis to the corruption claim. With all the leaked emails in the world, and the massive number of people who would have to collude to perpetrate a hoax, it's amazing that nobody has found any proof to this claim. And that is despite the efforts of the well-funded denial groups [sciencedaily.com] out there. Sure, follow the $!
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Actually the tsunami of climate change bollocks in the media and on most websites 24/7 implies precisely that. Nobody talks about natural variation at all.
Re:another variable that effects weather (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody has ever said that it is only man who is causing climate change
Actually the tsunami of climate change bollocks in the media and on most websites 24/7 implies precisely that.
No, you inferred it; they didn't imply it.
Nobody talks about natural variation at all.
What would you like them to say about it? It's not like we can petition the world to stop changing. However, the rate that the world is warming is way above what might occur naturally. Just because the climate could change naturally doesn't mean that we should be make it worse. Besides, don't deniers like to say that global warming is good because we should actually be moving into an ice age and that this warming actually stops that? You can't have it both ways! Is the "natural" climate change supposed to be getting hotter or colder?
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No, they imply it. Deliberately so. The reason is if you start talking about natural variation you have to start talking about the limits and extents of natural variation. Once you do that you can easily see that current warming is well within it. It's very deliberate and very deceptive. It's what Michael Mann's "hockey stick" was all about - i.e. denying any variability whatsoever, which is clearly untrue (and so the methods used to generate the graph prove
Re:another variable that effects weather (Score:4, Informative)
You are mistaken about all of that. Current warming is decidedly NOT within the limits and extents of natural variation. The hockey stick graph was not "clearly untrue" and has been supported by more than two dozen reconstructions [wikipedia.org]. The Medieval Warm Period was not a global phenomena and is therefore not comparable. Even if it was global, it still doesn't prove that the current warming is not the result of the greenhouse gases that we produce. That would be the same as saying the since people died before the invention of the gun then being shot won't kill you. Your opinion that the Medieval Warm Period has any relevance here is really down to the likes of Willie Soon, who has since been found to have received money from vested interests like Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute; a fact that he forgets to mention when he publishes papers on this subject.
If that is the basis of your claim then I stand by my statement that you are inferring the media's cover-up of this based on faulty assumptions.
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a fact that he forgets to mention when he publishes papers on this subject.
I missed a word there. I should have said that he sometimes forgets to mention that. He hasn't been completely hiding it.
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Doesn't matter if you consider current warming "within historical natural variation", because basic science shows ANY CO2 will have some warming effect "above any beyond" prevailing conditions whatever those may be, the "source" of CO2 does not change the outcome of gas column experiment. Sure, plenty of other factors take place in those prevailing con
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Once you do that you can easily see that current warming is well within it
Umm, no. Anyone with even a High School level understanding of basic science can look at the data and see that warming has accelerated by around 1000% of what we would expect to see in normal warming cycles if greenhouse gas contents hadn't been increased from the industrial age onward.
That you choose to base your opinions of well documented science on what mainstream media tells you doesn't change the direct, or even the indirect observations that overwhelmingly support that humans have changed the entire
Re:"petitioning" the world to stop changing (Score:1)
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Actually the tsunami of climate change bollocks in the media and on most websites 24/7 implies precisely that. Nobody talks about natural variation at all.
Chapter 8 of the Working Group I report in the most recent IPCC report [www.ipcc.ch] is titled: "Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing" so it addresses natural causes of climate change as well as anthropogenic. You think nobody is talking about natural variation just because you haven't bothered to check to see if they have. But the scientists know you can't understand anthropogenic climate change if you don't at the same time understand natural climate change. Ignoring it would give you an incomplete picture ma
Re:another variable that effects weather (Score:5, Funny)
" I had considered coming here to joke about whether the anti-science deniers would come out of the woodwork to claim that the magnetic field wasn't changing at all and they were just after funding...
After decades of man's thoughtless self-indulgence, a large part of the Earth's vital magnetic field has been chopped up into small pieces for use in motors, cow trash extractors, toys and worst of all, attaching bits of paper to refrigerators. It's time to return all magnets to mother Earth to do their part in keeping us cosmic particle free.
Re:another variable that effects weather (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, this is about the most on-topic post for this story so far! Now I better go and bury my magnetic pillow. It's a worry, because it stimulates the blood flow to my brain and without it I won't believe in homeopathy.
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Appropriate user name... I prefer the magnetic shoe inserts, aligning... something, who knows, they just make me feel good.
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Just yell about it loudly on political radio broadcasts - that will make people believe whatever you want them to.
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The problem is that on one side you have those who yell with absolute certainty that they are right, while on the other side there are scientists with their margins-of-error and weasel-words like "may" and "could". I can understand the attraction of believing the one who sounds the most confident, even if they don't have the facts to back up their opinions.
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The amusing part is that we most likely have accidentally stalled the onset of the next ice age, which would have been the natural climate progression. While I think this anthropogenic phenomenon is a good thing, we do need to understand and begin to control it before we get too much of this good thing.
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Wow. I had considered coming here to joke about whether the anti-science deniers would come out of the woodwork to claim that the magnetic field wasn't changing at all
The magnetic field AND the climate are both changing; It's just not humans that are causing them to change ---- they change plenty on their own without any human intervention.
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Unfortunately the people who actually study this sort of thing full time have looked at the numbers and found that this isn't the case regarding climate change. The warming that we are experiencing exceeds the rate that could happen with just natural variance. If you want to convince anyone there is no man-made factor to climate change then you will need to come under with some compelling figures to prove it. You can't just claim that it is a fact without any evidence.
You also need to explain how it is that
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The warming that we are experiencing exceeds the rate that could happen with just natural variance.
AMOUNT or degree of climate change is not capable of establishing that a cause of a change is due to humans. Large volcanic eruptions are completely natural and can have a huge impact for centuries. Could it be that a previous natural variation caused the climate to be colder than it ought to be, and the latest warming is natural restore from a natural variation downwards....
If you want to convince a
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AMOUNT or degree of climate change is not capable of establishing that a cause of a change is due to humans. You think that CO2 is the only thing released into the atmosphere, and Humans are the only things affecting the composition of the atmosphere and dissipation of sunlight/energy?
Really? On one had we have mountains of theories and studies filled with facts & figures, tables & graphs, predictions & observations; all of which are summarised in the IPCC reports [www.ipcc.ch]. On the other hand, we have an unverified claim based on.... what, your gut feeling??
Large volcanic eruptions are completely natural and can have a huge impact for centuries.
What makes you think that scientists haven't thought of the influence of volcanoes? Oh wait, they have [www.ipcc.ch]:
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That seems reasonable. Geoengineering should be treated with skepticism. I consider it to be on the same level as clean coal. It would be a great it could work, but it would only ever be a band-aid solution and no substitute for actually reducing the emissions in the first place. And you don't want to deploy some not-well-tested solution simply because some politician wants a quick fix to look like they are doing something (left) or wants to avoid making real changes that could cost their industry buddies m
Re:Geoengineering treated with skepticism. (Score:1)
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At this point, that is still in the realms of science fiction. And if you can change the climate to such an extent, any mistake could cause absolutely catestrophic effects that would be completely irresponsible. Maybe one day we will have to knowledge to manipulate the environment like this, but that won't be until long after the time that we need to do something about climate change.
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More than skepticism IMHO. A good example of a failure due to attempting to "engineer" a solution without full understanding of the system is the introduction of the cane toad into Australia. They eat everything edible that is smaller than themselves apart from the cane beetles they were introduced to eat, since those beetles are almost never at ground level and cane toads can't fly (without assistance of something like a golf club that is).
Re:Messing with geoengineering. (Score:1)
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Good.
Too late. We've already raised the CO2 level from about 280 to about 400 parts per million, and significantly affected the pH of the more interesting parts of the oceans. I believe that qualifies as "too much".
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How many scientists would still be employed in these studies if they were saying that the climate would change even if we never pumped a molecule of co2 into the atmosphere? why has global warming morphed into climate change?
How many climate scientists are currently employed? That of course depends on exactly how you define "climate scientist" but in the core areas of climate science I doubt the number is more than a few tens of thousands at best. Regardless of AGW or not don't you think we'd be studying the climate anyway? Or should we just fire all of the climate scientists and take what happens in the climate without the foresight that climate science affords us?
If "global warming" morphed into "climate change" then how di
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There is, they show that if the lava is magnetic first, the you get large balls-O-fire, and Jerry Lee Lewis starts to sing.
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Maybe.
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Doom, we would all die with a greatly reduced magnetic field. Basically, that is what we think happened to Mars.
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It's happened before and life has survived.
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It happened before on Mars.
Mars didn't survive so well.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
TIL macro-evolved life wasn't around 780k years ago.
It's an event that's happened 3 times per million years on average for a long, long time that complicated life was around for. Yes, the weakening involved with a flip has had varying severity, but at this point there's a pretty large N.
Will it kill us off? Almost certainly not. Could there be bad cancer rates for a couple or a few generations as a result? Heck yes.
The Internet. Information at your fingertips. (Score:2)
Because you didn't look? [google.com]
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700,000 years ago Homo Erectus WAS present so not only was macro-evolved life present, it doesn't seem humanoids were all that badly affected.
Re: So... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, science, in your opinion, what species will rule the earth next?
It will be cockroaches, more than likely. They seem to be new paradigm for political leadership. Shit flows downhill.
QED
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
This is likely nothing to worry about... if as hypothesized it is related to the magnetic flip. As the summary states this happens "on average" every 300000 years, and that's way more frequent than the return period of mass extinctions. Of course, this hypothesis could be wrong...
Re: So... (Score:1)
Way less frequently, mass extinction is every 65million years give or take a few.
Seems we are about due or over due for nearly everything - giant asteroid, super volcano eruption, gamma ray burst, magnetic field flip, 9 magnitude quake in the Pacific North West.
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So, only worry if you don't live underwater or don't have fur to protect you...
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This is likely nothing to worry about... if as hypothesized it is related to the magnetic flip. As the summary states this happens "on average" every 300000 years, and that's way more frequent than the return period of mass extinctions. Of course, this hypothesis could be wrong...
I think the most interesting impact would be on migrating species who in theory use the earth's magnetic polarity for direction.
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If they cross the equator and go from fall to spring, they're already alternating directions at 6 mo intervals in response to (pretty much) the same initial circadian stimulus. That is, flip the world over, and the algorithms to follow work the same.
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I think the most interesting impact will be during time period between collapse of the magnetosphere and re-establishment of normal magnetic operation of the earth's magnetic fields. Duration will be important, as well as the level of disorganization that is experienced. Unimpeded charged solar particles impacting the Earth could revolutionize the economy around the production, supply, and use of SPF-50000, Faraday cages for the home, and economically expedient euthanasia for the hopelessly lumpy and disc
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Magnetic flips most likely don't have drastic effects on the climate. Mass extinctions seem to all be environmental disruptions on a global scale. There's the main difference.
Of course a magnetic flip could severely disrupt the ability of the Earth's magnetosphere to reroute solar radiation around the Earth. The rate of progression of the flip is very important. For instance, what if it takes a geologically insignificant amount of time, like say 1k years, for the poles to flip? Well, this could lead to
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Or it is mainly irrelevant as long as the magnetic field isn't gone long enough to strip away the atmosphere.
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If losing the ozone layer was bad....
Maybe we can practice artificial magnetic field replacement - a series of superconducting coils.... if we get it right here, it could be really useful on Mars.
Re: So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing to worry about. People living at the time of reversal will have multiple poles and northern lights will be visible around the world. So a bit of confusion and a great light show.
Source: worrying about this years ago
Re: So... (Score:1)
But magnetic tape erasers will work in reverse, so instead of erssing the Hillary Clinton Sex Tape a friend gave me for Christmas I will actually be copying it?
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Pedant here. SPF has to do with blocking ultraviolet light and it's the ozone layer that blocks most of the UV light for us. I don't think the magnetic field of the Earth has any effect on ozone or the ozone layer.
Re: So... (Score:1)
It is a sign that we are all about to reverse genders, which will be extremely confusing for the transsexuals since they'll end up where they started.
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I came here expecting some whack-a-doodle to blame global warming on this weakening of the magnetic field. (And I wasn't disappointed as it comes up further down in the comments.)
As far as "doom" goes there is little or no evidence in the geologic record that shows anything unusual happens during a magnetic polarity switch. No mass die-offs, no evidence of unusual volcanic or seismic activity, no evidence of unusual changes in climate. Pretty much the only evidence we have for magnetic polarity shifts ar
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Sen. Inhofe, could you please go back to Oklahoma and guard your snowballs? I have evidence scientists want to steal your magic snowballs and claim their disappearance as evidence of man-made global warming.
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Re:More Evidence of my GW Dissent Hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. A complex system like earth's climate can be reduced to a correlation between something that is poorly mapped over historical time (magnetic field abnormalities) vs. an interplay with thousands of other variables (including anthrogenic CO2).
I love your simple world.
North pole is actually the south pole (Score:2)
Wul, you know the north pole...the magnetic north is actually the south pole. And the south pole is actually the north pole. I mean, it depends on if you're speaking of the north magnetic pole...the north magnetic pole of the Earth is actually the south...or the north-seeking pole, or which is actually the south pole of the Earth. So you have to look at it that way, too, thar.
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The Pan Evaporation rate explains it all.
Ah, no they don't. If your entire proof is to ignore the actual temperature readings completely then you can hardly claim that this debunks what the scientists say about the role of greenhouse gases on the climate. You also can't link to an article that claims a link between sunspots and evaporation (based on only six years of observations - don't deniers say that 150 years of records is not enough time??) as proof that it is the Earth's magnetic field "letting things in". How would changes in our magnetic
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Is Earht's future. A wasteland. In a few 1000 years it will look as if there was never any life on this third rock from the sun. And what of your gods then?
Venus will cool off, life will form and the cycle will progress. At some point, Venusians will discover space travel, come to a barren, rock strewn earth and miss everything but the giant 'Coca Cola' sign blasted into the moon.
A new religion will arise!
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And to think, it's all the fault of straight white males.
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