Earth’s Magnetic Field Flipped Superfast

[n2doc]

By Alexandra Witze, Science News
September 2, 2010

Just north of a truck stop along Interstate 80 in Battle Mountain, Nevada, lies evidence that the Earth’s magnetic field once went haywire.

Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa. Such “geomagnetic field reversals” occur every couple hundred thousand years, normally taking about 4,000 years to make the change. The Nevada rocks suggest that this particular switch happened at a remarkably fast clip.

Anyone carrying a compass would have seen its measurements skew by about a degree a week — a flash in geologic time. A paper describing the discovery is slated to appear in Geophysical Research Letters.

It is only the second report of such a speedy change in geomagnetic direction. The first, described in 1995 based on rocks at Steens Mountain, Oregon, has never gained widespread acceptance in the paleomagnetism community. A second example could bolster the theory that reversals really can happen quickly, over the course of years or centuries instead of millennia.



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/superfast-magnetic-reversal/

[mike r]

1. More evidence that the earth is young

And this probably happened during the year of the Genesis Flood. :sarcasm:

[BrklynLiberal]

2. lololol riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

[xchrom]

3. the paleomagnetism community?

are there paleomagnetic bars and clubs where paleomagnetic people hang out?

do they have paleomagnetic style?

[mzteris]

6. I don't know much about 'em, but

somehow I feel drawn by them. . .

[BridgeTheGap]

7. Yes, I hear they're very attractive people. n.t

[dimbear]

9. Interesting conjecture about compass needle shifting....

The way I heard it, the North pole gradually dies out, then slowly becomes the South pole. That would cause compasses to stop working completely, then start up again slowly pointing 180 degrees away.

[glinda]

4. My 87 Yr. Old mother talked about how she had heard about this

when she was much younger on the Arthur Godfrey Show. She even made reference to the speed of the shift and she is NOT in any way a science orientated person. Funny how this info has been out there for decades.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Ask your mother if she knows if George Bush I was born in France.

My dad swears that it was common knowledge way back when

[phantom power]

5. I thought that fast periodic pole reversals had been established for a long time