Hello, scientists!
Whether or not you usually belive world-ending conspiracies, you can't deny that an earth changing event is just over the horizon!
This action is geomagnetic reversal, where the north and south magnetic poles of Earth switch, making the old south the new north and vice versa. Don't panic, though, because not only has this happened before, this has happened many time before. The length of time between these reversals is called a chron. The average chron is about 450,000 years.
The next geomagnetic reversal will be the most significant one so far to humans. One reason is not only is it going to be the first one in recorded history, it will happen in a time where a lot of society is based off of electronics and magnets. Another reason is that the last one happened a full 780,000 years ago. Compare that to the average 450,000 years, and you come up with an urgent problem.
Before I mentioned that this has never happened in recorded history, so there really isn't any proof, right? Here comes the proof, you've asked for it.
Let's look at what may be the least likely location to find evidence of this: the ocean floor. Here, there is an underwater formation called a mid-ocean ridge. It occurs where two tectonic plates pull away from each other magma come up from the space between them. This cools, forming a ridge. This happens again and again, forming many ridges along the ocean floor. It's hard to explain, so here's a sped up visual depicting it.
When studying these ridges, scientists noticed something odd. As the rock cooled, it contained a iron-titanic oxide. The amount of the oxide corresponded with the direction of Earth's magnetic field. With this, scientists have been able to record our planet's magnetic field's history, and have thus predicted another magnetic reversal. It will come anytime from this instant to thousands of years into the future.
What effect will it have on us? Although it sounds silly, this event is actually dangerous. The magnetic field would become weaker, leaving the atmosphere vulnerable to high energy particles from the Van Allen radiation belts, layers of plasma above Earth held in place by the magnetic field. When these particles and the atmosphere collide, it produces radiation. Not good. A study in Greenland has shown that this has happened in the past.
Although this blog entry may have scared you, science is still on our side. Geologists have not been able to make a relationship between these magnetic reversals and extinctions of species.
The end of the chron is upon us! But don't worry. Earth will be fine. Hopefully.
That's all for today! Let me know stuff I missed and got wrong in the comments, or to suggest a future topic as well. Also, this is the first blog where you can actually follow my blog know and receive updates via email when I upload something new.
Until next time,
Ben's jamin'
Benjamin
P.S. Make sure you check out John's math blog at http://johncooksmathblog.blogspot.com.
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