I’m just a pilot. This article has caused friends and family to send emails today asking, “What’s going on in Tampa?”. People on this board have had some pretty interesting responses to it today as well, on this and other threads. I don’t think it’s widely known that magnetic north moves.
‘Normal’ movement and the big shift towards a pole reversal are two separate issues with me. Runways are renumbered all the time because of it. Airport diagrams list the annual rate of change. Folks are twitchy with stuff like this since we’re getting closer to 2012 I’m guessing.
Thanks for the article.
Good points. I realize most people have never had a class in geology let alone geophysics, so it can be alarming. But, we really don’t know what causes the earths magnetic field, so a lot of the predictions are just scientific guesses. But, some people are looking for a pole reversal soon based on the fact they tend to occur at “somewhat “ predictable intervals. But, as stated on the wikipedia link somewhat submitted above:
“Because the magnetic field has never been observed to reverse by humans with instrumentation, and the mechanism of field generation is not well understood, it is difficult to say what the characteristics of the magnetic field might be leading up to such a reversal.
Some speculate that a greatly diminished magnetic field during a reversal period will expose the surface of the Earth to a substantial and potentially damaging increase in cosmic radiation. However, Homo erectus and their ancestors certainly survived many previous reversals.
There is no uncontested evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any biological extinctions. A possible explanation is that the solar wind may induce a sufficient magnetic field in the Earth’s ionosphere to shield the surface from energetic particles even in the absence of the Earth’s normal magnetic field.[11]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
Happy flying!