When Earth’s Magnetic Field Begins to Reverse What Will Happen?

Most likely lots of bad shit!

Over the course of our planet’s history, the field has flipped hundreds of times: Magnetic north has slid toward the bottom of the planet while magnetic south has traveled north. Signatures in volcanic rocks reveal that the switch last happened 780,000 years ago, when human ancestors were just learning to make fire.

We’re still here, so we’ll probably survive the next reversal—but we don’t know what to expect. During the reversal, a gradual event that takes about a thousand years, the field will weaken. Without the protection it offers, will our sun’s radiation bombard us? Will migrating birds relying on the field become hopelessly confused? And when will it happen? Some estimates say “soon,” which, for a geophysicist, could be in the next 10,000 years. It could even start tomorrow.

Maybe some of the wild weather has something to with the possibility it has started to occur. Wait! We know that can’t be true because the great ant farm known as mankind is a lot more advanced this time around and is already making hurricanes do what they want!

The Earth's magnetic field plays a big role in protecting people from hazardous radiation and geomagnetic activity that could affect satellite communication and the operation of power grids as well as weather patterns. And it moves.

Scientists have studied and tracked the motion of the magnetic poles for centuries. The historical movement of these poles indicates a change in the global geometry of the Earth's magnetic field.

It may even indicate the beginning of a field reversal – a "flip" between the north and south magnetic poles.

The north magnetic pole's observed locations from 1831–2007 are yellow squares. Modeled pole locations from 1590–2025 are circles progressing from blue to yellow. (National Centers for Environmental Information)

Magnetic field generation

So how are magnetic fields like the one around Earth generated?

Magnetic fields are generated by moving electric charges. A material that enables charges to easily move in it is called a conductor. Metal is one example of a conductor – people use it to transfer electric currents from one place to the other. The electric current itself is simply negative charges called electrons moving through the metal. This current generates a magnetic field.

Layers of conducting material can be found in the Earth's liquid iron core. Currents of charges move throughout the core, and the liquid iron is also moving and circulating in the core. These movements generate the magnetic field.

Earth isn't the only planet with a magnetic field – gas giant planets like Jupiter have a conducting metallic hydrogen layer that generates their magnetic fields.

The movement of these conducting layers inside planets results in two types of fields. Larger motions, such as large-scale rotations with the planet, lead to a symmetric magnetic field with a north and a south pole – similar to a toy magnet.

These conducting layers may have some local irregular motions due to local turbulence or smaller flows that do not follow the large-scale pattern. These irregularities will manifest in some small anomalies in the planet's magnetic field or places where the field deviates from being a perfect dipole field.

These small-scale deviations in the magnetic field can actually lead to changes in the large-scale field over time and potentially even a complete reversal of the polarity of the dipole field, where the north becomes south and vice versa.

The designations of "north" and "south" on the magnetic field refer to their opposite polarities – they're not related to geographic north and south.

Earth's magnetic field. The north and south magnetic poles mirror the geographic North and South poles.

The Earth's magnetosphere, a protective bubble

The Earth's magnetic field creates a magnetic "bubble" called the magnetosphere above the uppermost part of the atmosphere, the ionosphere layer.

The magnetosphere plays a major role in protecting people. It shields and deflects damaging, high-energy, cosmic-ray radiation, which is created in star explosions and moves constantly through the universe. The magnetosphere also interacts with solar wind, which is a flow of magnetized gas sent out from the Sun.

The magnetosphere and ionosphere's interaction with magnetized solar wind creates what scientists call space weather. Usually, the solar wind is mild and there's little to no space weather.

However, there are times when the Sun sheds large magnetized clouds of gas called coronal mass ejections into space. If these coronal mass ejections make it to Earth, their interaction with the magnetosphere can generate geomagnetic storms. Geomagnetic storms can create auroras, which happen when a stream of energized particles hits the atmosphere and lights up.

During space weather events, there's more hazardous radiation near the Earth. This radiation can potentially harm satellites and astronauts. Space weather can also damage large conducting systems, such as major pipelines and power grids, by overloading currents in these systems.

Field flips

Scientists map and track the overall shape and orientation of the Earth's magnetic field using local measurements of the field's orientation and magnitude and, more recently, models.

The location of the north magnetic pole has moved by about 600 miles (965 kilometers) since the first measurement was taken in 1831. The migration speed has increased from 10 miles per year to 34 miles per year (16 kilometers to 54 kilometers) in more recent years. This acceleration could indicate the beginning of a field reversal, but scientists really can't tell with less than 200 years of data.

The Earth's magnetic field reverses on time scales that vary between 100,000 to 1,000,000 years. Scientists can tell how often the magnetic field reverses by looking at volcanic rocks in the ocean.

These rocks capture the orientation and strength of the Earth's magnetic field when they are created, so dating these rocks provides a good picture of how the Earth's field has evolved over time.

Field reversals happen fast from a geologic standpoint, though slow from a human perspective. A reversal usually takes a few thousand years, but during this time the magnetosphere's orientation may shift and expose more of the Earth to cosmic radiation. These events may change the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere.

Scientists can't tell with confidence when the next field reversal will happen, but we can keep mapping and tracking the movement of Earth's magnetic north.

And I’m positive that this taking place currently has NOTHING to do with the strange weather that is happening. And of course there is the SUPER VOLCANO that went off in the Pacific a couple of years back. We are pretty sure it’s some mad scientist sitting in a cubicle somewhere using who the hell knows what to do the weather modification. Why he is in control of your very thoughts if you believe some of the BS flying around! Well, except for mine. Most people are just mediocre minded cowardly conformists because it's comfortable and simple. I'm not one of those people.

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