"The day the compass points to the south" .. When will the poles of the earth turn?

One of the most interesting news lately has been the announcement by the British Geological Survey that the Earth's North Pole is tampering with compasses along the zero line passing through Greenwich, where its indicators will take a completely parallel trend for the first time since 360 years, the event will continue until about half a century and then Greenwich links will begin to point slightly east.

At that point you might wonder what is happening, isn't the compass supposed to continue pointing just north? Depending on what we know about the Earth's North Pole, it is not really a single pole as I learned in middle school, but there is a geographic pole (real) that always exists at the same point, the meridians of which stretch in the form of semi-circular imaginary circles that surround the globe. The magnetic north pole of the Earth is a moving point and is not fixed.In fact, over two centuries ago, the Earth's magnetic north pole moved about 2,000 kilometers, reaching south to the Canadian peninsula of Potia and is now on its way up towards the geographical North Pole. And possibly toward Siberia.

Dancing Poles

Why is this happening? “The Earth's magnetic field arises from what we call a dynamo effect,” says Dennis Kent, a professor of Earth and planetary science from Rutgers University. Dynamo, but it doesn't stop there. In Kent, there is a difference in the temperature of the Earth's outer core layers, which is not as solid as its former friend but is molten, allowing some material to move up from the bottom of the core, just as water boils. The lower parts of it rise up and then cool slightly downward.

"This produces a highly self-sustaining magnetic field with a bipolar character (north and south)," he says. "But it's a very dynamic field, and because of its complexity, it often has great fluctuations in Some of these fluctuations are called corneal contrast, a change in the Earth's magnetic field that can only be observed over long periods (centuries or decades). That is what causes the magnetic north movement, but it extends to the strangest and further!

This duality (North and South) has not been this all the time. This tale begins in the early 20th century, when French geophysicist Bernard Brunhis noticed that some of the ancient volcanic rocks he found in the French municipality of Seasons were magnetized against the direction of the Earth's magnetic field, while the opposite is supposed to happen. Iron - takes its own magnetic field in the same direction as the Earth's field, because the atoms within those materials are stacked in that direction as they form while they are just liquid lava.

But at that time we had no scientific knowledge of what the Earth's magnetic field meant, but by the 1950s and 1960s it became clear from the study of volcanic rocks in several regions that the Earth's magnetic poles - not geographically, The earth itself did not overturn - it was not like this all the time. It happened in the deep past, and by examining geological records, we now know that this reversal of magnetic poles occurred about 200 times over the past 80 million years.

Why are you messing with the ground connections?

Speaking to Meydan , Kent says: "It seems to happen accidentally. It's like rolling a coin several times in a row. Even if it's all a picture, it doesn't mean there's a high probability that the next time is 'writing'. "There is always a 50% probability for the next time." In fact, our history with these magnetic inversions has been bewildering, sometimes occurring in succession, every several thousand years, sometimes occurring at a rate of two to three times a century, but at other times millions of years may pass without any inversion of the Earth's magnetic poles. .

The last time we knew it, the Earth's magnetic poles reflected, about 780,000 years ago, it's a long time that some people think we're already on the verge of a new coup, but that great disparity in the incidence of that process means it could start tomorrow, or during 40 million years. Nevertheless, there is a research signal that we may already be close to one of the magnetic inversion, as the intensity of the geomagnetic field declines over the past 200 years at rates that some scientists suspect may cause a magnetic inversion within 2,000 years.

"Nevertheless, when we measure the total density of the geomagnetic field, we still find it within the normal range of variations," Kent said in an interview with Meydan . It was published by the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) several years ago, where the team collected volcanic rocks from the famous Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, an archipelago of several volcanic islands scattered on both sides of the equator in the Pacific Ocean. -The most suitable area for accurate measurements of density For the geomagnetic field, to quote Dennis.

Magnetic clutter

This kind of transformation does not occur suddenly, but may take from 1000 to 10,000 thousand years, during which weakens the magnetic field of the Earth, and misses the usual duality (North and South) and you find that it split into several weak poles scattered on the surface of the globe, in that case - and if humans They are still on the ground - our compasses will unfortunately not help us to recognize the direction of the geographical north, but will move randomly according to the nearby pole, but at that point it is interesting to ask about the status of compasses here in the Arab world, for example, what will you do if we see a magnetic coup ?

Short answer: The compass indicator will indicate south. The idea of ​​the compass is simple: Earth is a huge magnet with two magnetic poles. The needle of the opposite end of the earth, and then we mark red on the one that went to the North Pole, but with the poles reflected, the compasses will also be reflected, but we don't use compasses anymore, applications like Google Maps are useful for such tasks, but the problem is Google Maps may also have problems with the reflection of the poles a land.

“Hundreds of polar invasions have been documented in the geological record over the past 80 million years alone,” Kent says. “But their occurrence did not correspond to the big changes in the fossil record of life.” Clearly influenced by the reflection of the electrodes and during the low intensity of the Earth's magnetic field, major extinctions and shortages of living organisms, throughout our history, do not appear to be related to the magnetic properties of the planet.

But this does not mean that there will be no damage, protecting the Earth's magnetic field from a huge number of charged particles released from the sun, but we know that these particles - in cases of severe solar explosions - affect electronic devices and power plants, which means that the reduction Earth's magnetic field intensity is more threatening to modern humans than ever before, because almost all our lives depend on electronic devices, Kent tells Meydan : "Therefore, there may be social consequences for events like this, especially as the exposure of satellites to these heavily charged particles may Damages it, which could damage communications on the ground. "

Researchers from different domains are trying to understand the magnitude of the damage in such cases, not only because we are waiting for a magnetic coup, because it may not happen in a million years, but also because we do not yet understand how the sun works precisely, which exposes us from time to time to one of its raging jets At speeds close to the speed of light on our side, our magnetosphere saves us, but it does not do it every time. For example (9,10), a severe solar storm in 1989 shut down Canadian power plants, cutting electricity to 6 million people, and others in 2000 caused major problems for some communications satellites.

"More research is needed," Kent said at the end of his remarks. "The length of time that separates us from the last coup does not mean that we are close to an imminent coup." In fact, despite all the progress we have made, We have not yet been able to accurately understand the mechanisms of Earth and the Sun.While the scientific community tends to accept the theory of dynamo, in either case, we cannot use any of them to achieve precise future predictions, which puts us directly opposite the unknown, until we detect. About the secret of that magnetic game - but wait and ponder our connections!