Over the last years, scientists have been able to go beneath the crust of the Earth and look inside the core of the planet. They did that originally through seismology, and much more recently, looking at it mathematically, extrapolating from information satellites are giving us. The magnetic field that protects our planet from solar and galactic radiation, the dangerous rays that can harm things on our planet, is generated in the outer core.
As energy travels through that core it creates an electrical current, which in turn creates a magnetic shield that goes far out into space.
In the s, scientists started to send satellites up into the atmosphere and get these little glimpses of what was happening to the magnetic shield. What they have found is phenomenally surprising. There is this absolutely tortured bunch of magnetic fields within the core. Scientists have found that all plants and animals respond to the magnetic field of our planet. Similarly, some turtles need to go back to the very same bay in Australia in order to lay their eggs. Will it make enough of a difference to harm life on Earth?
That part is not clear. The big question mark about the eventual switch of the poles is what effect it will have on creatures that are already severely compromised in their ability to go where they need to go. Electromagnetic disruptions in space can also be incredibly damaging to the technologies we depend on. Tell us about the magnetic storm of and how a British company has devised an algorithm for the insurance industry to calculate the cost of future storms.
Our electronic grids are very tightly interconnected, so a failure in one part of it can cascade across the planet. There was a near miss in from an absolute super-storm that the sun let loose. This massive, once-inyears event happened to be released when the sun was facing away from our Earth. Had it been a week or two earlier, it would have been directly facing our planet and the forensic analysis suggests that we would have been sent back to the Victorian age in terms of our electrical systems had that happened.
To do that, he needed a unique formation: a thick piece of undisturbed terra cotta that had then been covered by hot basal lava from a volcano.
When terracotta is heated up, then cools down, some of the electrons in its molecular structure, will become fossil magnets. They will lay down the coordinates of the magnetic field on that exact spot of the Earth at that precise time, so you can see very precisely what was happening.
Brunhes lived near Puy de Dome in the Massif Central, in the middle of France, where there are all these extinct volcanoes. What he discovers in the terra cotta is that when this terracotta got super- heated, and then cooled again, the poles were on different sides of the planet. This was an absolutely anguishing finding for scientists at that time.
They had no way of explaining how or why this would happen. They also had no way of confirming that it had happened, so there was great doubt about his finding. As a result, he never published again on the topic and died a few years later of a massive stroke at the age of But this was the first signal that the heart of the molten outer core of our planet is much more tortured than scientists had imagined. Well, scientists haven't figured it out yet. It's unnerving to think that our modern way of life — banking, the stock exchange, missile tracking, GPS — relies on the outcome of something we can neither predict, nor control.
And that's with Earth's magnetic field at its current strength. We may not be able to stop a polar flip, but we can at least start to take measures to minimize the damage. The first step? Figure out what's going on with this whacky field. Right now, they could be our greatest hope for solving this riddle. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options.
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This is particularly important during solar storms, where there is a higher-than-normal influx of energetic particles. These are again mostly harmless to us, but they might be devastating to our technology. The best example might be the Carrington event, a powerful geomagnetic storm that happened in The storm was so powerful that aurorae were visible in the Northern Hemisphere all the way down to the Caribbean.
Telegraph systems failed and, in some cases, gave operators electric shocks. On the other hand, some telegraph operators were capable of operating the system without power. If such a storm were to happen today, the damages might be a lot more significant. The estimated cost of such damage would be in the trillions of dollars. However, damaging events such as these are more the exception than the rule. Let's work this out with a compass.
At the moment, your compass has a nice little red arrow pointing North. When a full geomagnetic reversal takes place, the arrow will point South. But in between these two events, there is a chaotic period where multiple poles might form at once, confusing your compass and even the animals that use the magnetic field for navigation. This is a messy time and the strength of the field could be up to 20 percent lower than it currently is.
The chaotic period during the reversal can last thousands of years or, at the very least, a few hundred years on some rare occasions.
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