Yep, we dont know EVERYTHING yet about how the Earth and other solar bodies function over time, science is as arrogant a pursuit in practice as it is flexible in its ideals and need to discover and truly understand, so todays bold claims are all to often tomorows mistakes or incompletions.
I can not believe i am a science student sometimes.... but choose it any day over alarmist sensationalisations that have little rational grounding.
Ric,
That's fair enough.
It was really the treatment of the topic that got me. We're all gunna die in 2012!
All good Sci-Fi books are based on facts. If only he put his theory in this form, it would have made for a better read and people might have learned something about this phenomena.
No worries JJJ, if we survive 2012 then I suppose there is 2036 and the potential asteroid strike, no doubt there will be books written when the nutters get wind of it.
We all need a good laugh now and then
If my memory is correct, and it sometimes isnt. LOL
We are overdue a magnetic Pole reversal by some 300,000 years.
I studied Geology for a while also.
But being in the aviation industry now, I often wonder what the effect woud be on aircraft that are on route? Luckily thesedays, they don't rely on magnetic compasses as much, but GPS. The thing I don't know is, what effect GPS will have though when the poles reverse again.
Hi Mike, as far as I remember being a gradual process I dont think that it would be a real problem to write compensating software to correct the errors that would occur with GPS.
As to why it occurs, I think there is some truth in that the Sun's magnetic field has an effect on the magma layer beneath the Earth's crust but not in the way the doom and gloom pundit's suggest.
Ric,
That's fair enough.
It was really the treatment of the topic that got me. We're all gunna die in 2012!
All good Sci-Fi books are based on facts. If only he put his theory in this form, it would have made for a better read and people might have learned something about this phenomena.
DOH! That means we might not be able to witness the next Venus transit, and the next total solar eclipse visible from Australia
How would it stop the earth from rotating, then start it going in the opposite direction? What is everybody's opinion would be the effect?
That is a very good question, and one that would need great and indepth contemplation of magnetic/gravitational solar body relationships.
In short, i dont know.
