A Visit With a Person of High Strangeness Geo-magnetic Fluctuations Precursor To Pole-shift?
Geo-magnetic Fluctuations Precursor To Pole-shift?
The Earth's geo-magnetic field is now weakening more rapidly. Could this be a signal that the long-overdue shift of the magnetic poles is about to arrive?
Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth’s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet’s surface, a new study says.
The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth’s solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet’s magnetic field.
The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, modeled Earth’s magnetic field using nine years of highly accurate satellite data.
The changes “may suggest the possibility of an upcoming reversal of the geomagnetic field,” said study co-author Mioara Mandea, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.
Earth’s magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times over the past billion years, and the process could take thousands of years to complete.
“It is in this region that the shielding effect of the magnetic field is severely reduced, thus allowing high energy particles of the hard radiation belt to penetrate deep into the upper atmosphere to altitudes below a hundred kilometers (62 miles),” Mandea said.
The study documents just how rapidly the flow in Earth’s core is changing, said Peter Olson, a geophysics professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved with the research.
By using satellite imagery, researchers have a nearly continuous measurement of changes, he said.