Magnetic pole reversal may not happen as soon as scientists expected
The Earth's magnetic strength has been dropping sharply over the past two centuries, and no one knows why.
At the same time, a disturbing soft spot in the Earth's magnetic field called the "South Atlantic Anomaly" has appeared over the Atlantic Ocean, and it has already been shown to be a problem for microcircuits on orbiting satellites!
These two troubling observations raise concerns that we may be seeing evidence of a reshaping that is about to take place that will flip the compass points upside down in what is known as a "magnetic pole reversal".
But the researchers behind new research modeling the planet's magnetic field in the recent past, caution that we shouldn't rush into assuming such a reversal occurs.
“Based on similarities with the recreated anomalies, we predict that the anomaly in the South Atlantic will likely disappear within the next 300 years, and that the Earth is not heading toward a polarity reversal,” says geologist Andreas Nilsson of Lund University in Sweden. The flowing lines of the planet's magnetic field eventually point in the opposite direction.
What this reversal means for humanity isn't entirely clear, as the last time such a massive event occurred, just 42,000 years ago, life on Earth seemed to be going through a rough patch as rains of high-speed charged particles shot through our atmosphere.
Much of what we know about the history of the magnetic field comes from the way the direction of the field forces the particles in molten material to line up before locking in place when it solidifies, and drilling through the layers of metallic arrows provides us with a fairly clear record of how the compass pointed over the course of the year. over thousands of years.
In the new study, researchers from Lund University and Oregon State University have reconstructed a detailed timeline of our planet's magnetic crust stretching back to the last Ice Age by analyzing samples of volcanic rocks, sediments and artifacts from around the world.
"We have mapped changes in the Earth's magnetic field over the past 9,000 years, and it is likely that anomalies such as those in the South Atlantic are recurring phenomena associated with corresponding changes in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field," says Nelson.
And it turns out that the soft spot in the South Atlantic is not entirely out of the ordinary, as a similar geological change occurred before 1600 BC.
In the end, it is likely that the Earth's magnetic field as a whole will return to activity not seen since the early nineteenth century, and this would suggest that we should not interpret current deviations of magnetic force contraction as strong signs of a polar reversal.
Source
https://www.arageek.com/news/earths-magnetic-poles-probably-wont-flip-after-all-scientists-predict?fbclid=IwAR2013c4XkyLkJedJJlCwp8Xv8qUfWhvxN10gFPmCtiV2-VqrJ-6iu9eGHk