Poles reversing?

[venus]

Could the poles be reversing (http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/6567446/massive-iceberg-heading-to-wa/)?
"A massive iceberg covering more than 140sqkm is heading towards the West Australian coast.

The 19km long, 8km wide block is drifting slowly north from Antarctica.

It is one of the biggest icebergs ever seen so far north and calved from the eastern end of the Ross Ice Shelf almost a decade ago."

[multiweb]

Man! This is too good to be true. As soon as it's in Aussie waters we should tow it and refill lake george. :thumbsup: We can keep the rest of the ice to keep the beer cool this Xmas. :drink:

[Benno18]

I like your thinking Marc!!!!!

[MrB]

Hands off buddy! It's ours! :lol:

Seriously though, I don't think it will get here.
Would be pretty cool though if it did.... oops, sorry, bad pun.

[OzRob]

I don't understand how an iceberg has anything to do with the poles reversing...:shrug:

[Jabba]

rofl, wouldnt the ice melt by the time it may have gotten close to Aus?

[multiweb]

Years and years ago they did tow one of these next to Saudi Arabia if I recall. I can't remember the details though. Might have to google it.

Here it is . (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915637-1,00.html) :)

[erick]

Yes, magnetic pole reversal doesn't seem to follow any particular periodicy, but the current orientation seems to have persisted for quite some time now and field strength has apparently weakened by about a third in the last 2,000 years.

I doubt the movement of ice has anything to do with the earth's magnetic field.

[gmbfilter]

Might be fun!
It seems that in 2012 the planet is going to rotate in reverse

http://survive2012.com/index.php/geryl-pole-shift.html

Should rock everybody's socks.

[erick]

Can you get these guys?!

He states "With clock-like regularity, sudden reversals and pole shifts are natural to the Earth".

I think I'd rather trust the British Geological Survey:-

Re "with clock-like regularity..."

"How often do reversals occur? As a matter of geological record, the Earth's magnetic field has underone numerous reversals of polarity. We can see this in the magnetic patterns found in volcanic rocks, especially those recovered from the ocean floors. In the last 10 million years, there have been, on average, 4 or 5 reversals per million years. At other times in Earth's history, for example during the Cretaceous era, there have been much longer periods when no reversals occurred. Reversals are not predictable and are certainly not periodic in nature. Hence we can only speak about the average reversal interval."

http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/reversals.html#2

Re "sudden reversals....."

"How quickly do the poles 'flip'? We have no complete record of the history of any reversal, so any claims we can make are mostly on the basis of mathematical models of the field behaviour and partly on limited evidence from rocks that retain an imprint of the ancient magnetic field present when they were formed. For example, the mathematical simulations seem to suggest that a full reversal may take about one to several thousand years to complete. This is fast by geological standards but slow on a human time scale."

http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/reversals.html#4

Interesting how these guys put their stuff in books to sell for $$$s and reputable scientists submit their stuff to peer-reviewed journals for which they get zilch $s. Sheeesh! :rolleyes:

[venus]

[/QUOTE]I doubt the movement of ice has anything to do with the earth's magnetic field.[/QUOTE]

Well the polar ice is literally moving in the opposite direction;)
Another phenomena, why are there spirals in the sky?....

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/6571600/light-sparks-ufo-excitement

[erick]

"The Long Count Calendar of the Ancient Mayans ends on Dec 21 2012."

Well I have updated news. The calendar hanging by my desk ends on 31 December 2009.

Looks like only 21 days to the Earth's destruction. :sadeyes:

[erick]

Ice follows ocean currents mostly and wind direction partly - always has done and always will do.

Spirals in the sky - Russian missile launch gone wrong.

[Gemini2544]

Everyone knows Iceberg are magnetic don't you remember the Titanic it was made of metal. That accident would have never happened if they built it out of plastic...LOL

[multiweb]

One the note of the pole reversal. How does this work? Is this going to affect the magnetosphere which if I understand right is the only shield we have against the solar wind? So what happens during the transition? We count to 5, hold our breath and slap on the banana 30+? :shrug:

[sjastro]

The Coriolis force at work.

On the subject of geomagnetic reversals does anyone know the name of the genius (or geniussss...) who used geomagnetic changes in the Earth's past to confirm plate tectonics (sea floor spreading at a mid ocean ridge).

That has got to be one of the most profound examples of lateral thinking I have ever come across.

Steven

[Gemini2544]

From my understanding the process is slow & takes years, As the pole swings it travels across the globe. So for a short time the North pole may be in fiji as it slowly flips. The magnosphere will remain just tilted.

[multiweb]

:eyepop: Can't be good though. I just hope the N or S pole is not facing the sun in any path it's going to take along the meridian. Talk about a magnifying glass across a path of ants. :lol:

[Geoff45]

My understanding is that the field gradually weakens (as it is doing at the moment), fades away to a low irregular field (ie no clearly defined N or S pole), then starts strengthening again with the poles reversed.
Geoff

[multiweb]

Found some info here (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_astrosciences08.htm). Once you sanitize the whole "we're all gonna die!" end of the world theory. ;)

This bit is a crackup :lol:

"...This report is written with the intention of alerting everyone to a potential danger to our biosphere on earth and is not intended to alarm people. The proper action to take is to prepare for disaster on a global scale ..."

[erick]

I read somewhere that the atmosphere will have to cope with the solar wind and cosmic radiation for a while. I guess we'll lose some atmosphere. But, look on the bright side - weaker aurora will be seen from all over the world! :thumbsup:

[Rob_K]

Hi Steve! You precipitated a trip down memory lane as I dusted off a lot of my old geology text books! These were written at a time when continental drift was a relatively new theory (in wide acceptance anyway), and as far as I can gather, the suggestion that magnetic anomolies along oceanic ridges could be related to the spreading mechanism was first made by F J Vine and D H Matthews in an article titled "Magnetic Anomolies Over Oceanic Ridges", in "Nature", vol 199, p947, 1963.

Stand to be corrected on that, haven't gone the Wikipedia route!

Cheers -

[sjastro]

Thanks Rob.

I did a year of geology at Uni in the late 70s.
Plate tectonics was still in its infancy but I recall being very impressed by the brilliance of that idea.

Regards

Steven

[renormalised]

You're right there, Rob. Took me down memory lane too....1st year geology class:D Stuff you forget about as you specialise:D

[Karls48]

We humans done pole reversal already. What we call North Pole is actually South Pole. Why – well the north end of magnetic needle in the compass points to it.

[mswhin63]

Curious that the magnetic field is dimishing allowing more radiation to enter the atmosphere, wonder if it is at the same rate as global warming is increasing.