Earth’s Magnetic Field Losing Power
Four billion years ago, Mars suffered a magnetic crisis which caused it to lose its magnetic field. Now, our own magnetic field is becoming weaker–a magnetic field where the continuous spin of our planet’s liquid metallic core is generating its magnetic force field which protects our planet from space radiation. This is seen by auroras, caused by an interaction between charged particles and the atmosphere, as they flow into north and south magnetic poles.
Scientists at the laboratory of the University of Maryland, headed by physicist Dan Lathrop, are studying this factor by recreating a molten iron dynamo at the core of Earth, using 240 pounds of highly explosive molten sodium. Additionally, geologist John Shaw of the University of Liverpool in England has discovered just how dramatically the field has changed. “When we plot the results from the ceramics,” he notes, “we see a rapid fall as we come toward the present day. The rate of change is higher over the last 300 years than it has been for any time in the past 5,000 years. It’s going from a strong field down to a weak field, and it’s doing so very quickly.”
If this rate continues as such a rapid rate, it looks as if the existing magnetic field could be in a position within the next 200 years to either expose Earth to these charged particles, or it could quit weakening by strengthening, or it could flip polarity–compasses could begin to point to the South Magnetic Pole. This reversal seems to occur every 250,000 years, and signs are showing we are ready for one to occur. Many researchers feel that we are already in the transition phase, because of growing areas of magnetic anomaly signaling a weakened and chaotic state for the field. According to recent data, Earth’s magnetic field has been weakening over the past 300 years, with a complete reversal taking hundreds if not thousands of years to complete.
Earth inhabitants of this particular civilization or of any written records have never lived through this type of magnetic reversal before. The way we can understand this process is by visualizing on the simplest level, the source of the magnetic field on Earth can be seen as a giant magnetic bar inside of our planet. A complex interaction, the magnetic field is not a uniform field. Its intensity and direction of the field changes not only in locations but also time frames.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 5:56 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
