What Does It All Mean?
by JoySaw a story yesterday from BBC (or maybe Telegraph) about a 'hole' in planet Earth's magnetosphere. Then today I found a compilation of recent stories (since the year 2000) about further interesting magnetic events in our close solar neighborhood -
Meanwhile, Some Chaos in the Neighborhood
…including news I'd somehow missed about our magnetic field disappearing as precursor to our own pole-flip, which instead of maybe being hundreds or thousands of years away, now looks to be imminent thanks to five dedicated satellites launched by NASA in 2007, just a scant month before our magnetosphere suddenly developed a bow wave hole four times the diameter of the planet. From the NASA article:
The event began with little warning when a gentle gust of solar wind delivered a bundle of magnetic fields from the Sun to Earth. Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called “magnetic reconnection.” High above the Earth’s poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up (reconnected) to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded; within minutes they overlapped over Earth’s equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.
Now, modern humans are quite used to the sun flipping its magnetic lid, as that is known to occur every 11 years. But modern humans have never experienced a flip in the Earth's magnetic field, so we're not very sure what to expect – beyond more communications and electrical disruptions and a lot more skin cancers.
What does it all mean? Should we become nocturnal creatures, safely living our active lives shielded from the solar storms by the planet itself and shunning daylight like the plague? Should we start digging underground cities and tunnels and abandon the surface of the planet for awhile altogether? Or is it just a minor inconvenience of short duration, despite having been predicted as recently as last summer that an Earth-flip would take hundreds or thousands of years?
…and if our satellites (and communications, and electrical grids) are now in mortal danger of being wiped by solar wind and mass ejections because there's no protective magnetosphere, when will we know it's over?
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
There's also…
Boundary Between Earth's Upper Atmosphere And Space Has Moved To Extraordinarily Low Altitudes, NASA Instruments Document
No idea what it all means. Maybe this stuff is normal and we're just now noticing it because we have the equipment to look for it? They say this stuff is no big deal, happened before, will happen again…. takes a lickin' keeps on tickin'. Notice that 2012 date seems to come up often too. *shrug*
Comment by Rob R. — December 22, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Rob R.:
Well, the last Earth-flip was at least 780,000 years ago (and I did read something about an axis shift upcoming too), so things might get pretty hairy and none of us should be surprised. I don't like the idea of being a denizen of the night, but I could always dig into the mountain on the other side of the bathroom wall, live inside the ridge. Of course, if nothing's growing, there won't be much to eat… hydroponics? Reflectors? Maybe this is what that super parasol NASA's planning to deploy a.s.a.p. is all about, as opposed to carbon-caused global warming. Maybe we could generate electricity with it too, power our caves.
The Mayan calendar ends in 2012, but it's just the end of one age (that began on August 11, 3114 b.c.e. (Gregorian) and beginning of another – even the longest of the long-cycles. They believed there were 5 previous ages. So unless what it really is turns out to be Star Wars between the Reptilians from Draco and the Nordics from the Pleiades, humanity might live through it okay. Heck, if Icke is right, we could just take over the Draco and Greys' already-built underground bases! Since in that scenario, the Nordics (evolved from primates rather reptiles or sauroids, do eventually win.
My question is, does having space closer to earth mean we can start building real space ships we just fly outta here instead of blast out atop WMDs? §;o)
Comment by Joy — December 22, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:33 pm
An axis shift would certainly be much more devastating than a pole-reversal but, I don't believe there's much evidence for it. Your talking about crustal displacement yes?
Or worse still (assuming there's something worse than living in a world were Icke is right) we could be wiped out by Near-Earth asteroid Eros
…which would suck.
I'm still bettin' on that space-tether/elevator thing.
Comment by Rob R. — December 22, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Rob R.:
I dunno what's involved in an axis shift, other than the planet "rolling over" its axis to a different orientation. Doesn't seem like that necessarily has to involve crustal displacement, though earthquakes and volcanoes might increase heartily. Velikovski said this happened during the transition from Early to Middle Kingdom in Egypt, and the roll-over was so thorough that Early Kingdom tomb inscriptions showing the sun rose in the west were replaced by Middle Kingdom tombs reflecting the new reality of it rising in the east. I know he's highly unpopular with the sciencey crowd, but his scholarship on the many histories was fairly flawless.
He also mentioned one of the 52-year Venus cycles (Mayans used the 52-year cycle as well) after the Exodus as the "Day the Sun Stood Still" for Jashua during the conquest of Canaan. Apparently a relatively minor axis shift. Only if the rotation were changed (and that would take more than a hole in the magnetosphere or an axis shift) could we expect massive crustal displacement and melting as angular momentum gets transferred to heat.
But if we discount the Egyptian tomb carvings and insist the sun has always risen in the east, axis shift is unlikely without a close encounter of the nastiest kind with a similar size object. Doesn't seem like a magnetic pole shift would be so bad. Happens to the sun every 11 years, though it does mark 'peak' solar activity cycle. I'm more concerned with that period of no magnetic field, because the radiation is likely to kill or change life rather drastically.
And all that would just be entertaining fiction if NASA wasn't so oddly concerned about magnetic weirdnesses of late.
Oh, I don't know about Charlie or the Queen, but William sure doesn't look like a lizard to me! Heck, he looks like he came right out of Central Casting for the role of Prince Charming. Hopefully our oversized moon will shield us from large size debris. If not, we didn't need to lose our magnetosphere to get hit. That magnetosphere would play a role (according to Velikovski) in shielding us from total annihilation by a near-size planet (like Mars or Venus), though, if things were chaotic enough in the inner system. So I hope Terra gets on with her flip before too long.
I'm thinking giant electrical plug from the parasol that we can just plug into a receptical above the cave system… §;o)
Comment by Joy — December 22, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Since this is a meaningless thread about meanings that might or might not be, I'd like to recommend to everyone here what is the top-recommended diary on DKos right now (by a Methodist minister), because it will certainly put the issue of meaning into down-to-earth context…
Kevin Died Today
It's not too long to read, and fully worth the effort this Christmas week.
Comment by Joy — December 22, 2008 @ 10:53 pm
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Wouldn't its 'rolling over' affect its rotation? I can see where a magnetic pole change might be a non-event so far as planetary cataclysms go, but seems like the planet 'rolling over' would be pretty catastrophic.
Maybe whatever it was that caused Venus' retrograde spin could have caused the axis shift here? (I should write a freakin' book… this is gold! I just need a few more 2012 'coincidences' some Nibiru [sic?] stuff and somehow tie in the Pleiades super computer's 2012 goal of 10,000 trillion operations per second…. just 'cause it sounds so menacing. Voilla! )
I'm gonna be so rich!
Guess when the solar maximum is?
Doesn't the atmosphere handle a lot of that stuff too though? How drastic are we talking? Does the field have to disappear in order to reverse itself? Everything I have read seems to play it down. 'Maybe some satellites will malfunction, maybe slightly increased incidents of certain skin cancers, maybe some problems for species and technologies whom rely on the cardinal points for navigation or whatever-else (etc., etc.,) but at the end of the day, more-or-less, North will be South and South will be North but not much else changes or matters'
Interesting, isn't it. If we we about to be F'ed, would they tell us? Would you want to know?
You aint the only one.
*I'm sure the cave system retrofits are just around the corner
Comment by Rob R. — December 22, 2008 @ 10:58 pm
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:23 am
Rob R.:
Depends on the magnitude of the shift. Velikovski's scenario for the full flip did coincide with very serious global catastrophes, as recorded by all extent civilizations on the planet at the time (though he did some re-calculating on the Egyptian kingdoms based on then-recent redating of the Sphinx and such. Confirmed the Canaan shift as occurring on the next pass of Venus (then an inner system comet) by the Babylonian Venus records (they were watching too, as were the Chinese, the MesoAmericans, and even the early Britons and Scandanavians). Venus was a regular troublemaker back then.
Still, I'd think axis shift wouldn't exchange that much heat, even if it did cause some chaos in the upper core and mantle. That would affect the magnetic polarity. Science doesn't really know much of anything about what to expect or how long it'll take. They do suspect it's happening -
Guardian: Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip
New Scientist: Solar wind to shield Earth during pole flip
USNews: Why Earth's Magnetic Field Flip-Flops
NOVA: Magnetic Storm (cool working model)
LL/Nature: Anomalies Hint at Magnetic Pole Flip
And, of course, it would depend on your definition of "catastrophic." I'd think radiation strong enough to drastically affect reproduction (people not living long enough) qualifies.
It's not just retrograde, it also presents the same face to us (Earth) at perihelion – indication of a close encounter at some point. Its orbit is close to perfectly circular, too. Indicating it may have been obtained relatively recently. But Velikovsky already wrote that book (Worlds in Collision) back in 1950. Fun reading, for sure!
LOL!!! Write it! I don't know about 'Nibiru', but 'Nemesis' is an angle. That's the infamous "Dark Star," Sol's supposed evil twin supposedly headed this way.
Yeah, yeah. 2012.
According to the polarity in the rocks, apparently so. Usually accompanied by extinctions and then new evolutionary directions. Or so 'they' say. Indicative, I'd suspect, of radiation hazard to dominant, surface-dwelling day-hunters. But there are anomalies first. Apparently there's a region in Southern Africa where compasses have been pointing south for a century or so. Also, in periods of no primary magnetosphere, the lesser field (right angle) takes precedence, along with regional fields. We have cool maps of gravitational variations and anomalies on our planet, also thought to result from subsurface oddities and flows. Why not magnetic?
We as a species can probably handle life without television, cell phones or computers (or even electricity) in a survival situation. Bees, migrating birds and many species of sea life from turtles to whales navigate by the magnetic field. They might not do so well. But hey, My house is built smack dab atop intersecting Ley lines, cardinal ordination (I think Masons laid it out and did the foundational rockwork – it was a hunting lodge for late 19th century railroad barons). Maybe that makes us immune!
We're plotting a real blockbuster here, you know. §;o)
Haven't they been telling us for years to stay out of the sun due to the already-present and expanding "ozone holes" over the poles? They've even developed ever more powerful sunscreens – I've an SPF 50 on the shelf by the front door. But while I love and appreciate the sun for what it is (I'm a bit of a farmer, orchard and vineyard keeper), I've never liked hanging out in it much. Don't tan, figured out by high school that my freckles were never going to run together to give me a fine bronzing. Hats, long sleeves, morning and afternoon/evening outdoor work, after the sun's gone behind the ridge. Or just work/play in the forest, where the sun's not a big issue.
But yeah, I'd want to know. I can see why they wouldn't say so outright. People are panicky beasts en masse. That wouldn't stop them from planning, designing, building and/or deploying whatever observational or protective action plans they could, though.
I have the perfect terrain for a Hobbit-hole, all the way through the east-west ridge above the house. But I'd either have to be rich or a lot younger and stronger to actually build it. Oh, well. Guess I'll have to make do with my little hand-spade behind the bathroom wall…
Comment by Joy — December 23, 2008 @ 12:23 am
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:38 am
Moreover…
…would give us extended day or extended darkness, depending on where you happen to be when the sun "stands still."
Comment by Joy — December 23, 2008 @ 12:38 am
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Pole wander over millions of years, sure. Flipping magnetic poles, no problem. But rapid shifting of the earth's axis? Common, anyone who claims to have a physics background should instantly dismiss such nonsense, its too crazy even to make good sci-fi. Now what I wonder is whether a weakening magnetic field effects global climate. Perhaps the combination of solar activity and a weakening magnetic field has contributed to global warming.
Comment by Todd Berkebile — December 23, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Todd B.:
Actually, since I read both Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos in my youthful innocence primarily BECAUSE they were verboten by all sciencey turf-warriors worth the title (Shapely premier among them, and he was a bigger ass than Wolfgang Pauli), I must have considered it pretty good sci-fi. Einstein thought so too, if what he was reading is any indication.
And you've gotta admit (well, no you don't and I know you won't) it's at least less howl-inducing than riding a mole drill all the way to the core to plant a nuke and "fix" that little lost black hole problem… (only in Hollywood). Besides, I think Rob and I have definitely fleshed out an even bigger best-seller here. Deal is, it's got to be written fast or we won't make any money before 2012 when money becomes obsolete. Oh, well.
Haven't we been told repeatedly that climate change can only happen over thousands and millions of years by slow increments? What's this bunk about "sudden rapid changes" and "tipping points?" Why can't you sciencey types ever make up your minds?
Comment by Joy — December 23, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Oh, and besides, axis-flips only happen on close encounters of the non-annihilation kind, when magnetospheres 'collide' (like trying to put like poles together). If we happened to be missing a magnetosphere in such an encounter, we'd end up like that used-to-be-planet between Mars and Jupiter… §;o)
Comment by Joy — December 23, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Joy, there's no such thing as "axis-flips" if by that you mean the axis of rotation. If the Earth were to collide with another planet, the encounter would change not only the direction but also the angular speed of rotation.
And you can't transfer angular momentum into heat. Kinetic energy can be converted into thermal energy, but angular momentum is just a different kind of thing. You can exchange angular momentum between two planets. Through tidal friction, the Moon is constantly robbing the Earth of its angular momentum, so that the Earth's day is slowly getting longer and the Moon's orbital speed and radius are gradually increasing. But the total angular momentum of the Earth and the Moon is not wasted in the process, it stays the same. (I neglected the tidal effect of the Sun, which transfers angular momentum between the Earth's spin and orbital motion.)
Comment by olegt — December 23, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
December 23rd, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Aw, don't rain on our cool blockbuster oleg! It didn't include axis shift anyhoo, because I'm not expecting any collisions. Mere magnetic pole flip, it's happened hundreds or thousands of times before (usually accompanied by deposition of magma as lava in various parts of the world). I think that's quite chaotic enough to suffice for the purposes of a great catastrophe tome.
Now I must go do some chores, lots of folks coming for Christmas and there's pine needles everywhere, sheets in the guest room need to be changed, dishes have to be washed and mass amounts of fudge, fruitcake and sugar cookies, etc. must be made to ensure just the right amount of hyper-ness in the grandkids for the holiday. Not to mention tidying up the fairways from the windstorm so we can play the top nine today since it'll be above freezing, lay in deadwood for the bonfire.
Merry Christmas to All!
Comment by Joy — December 23, 2008 @ 2:10 pm