Stop The Smart Grid
Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 7:55 pm
a discussion forum for Polywell fusion
https://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/
Carrington event, yep it would screw us over. But Earth's magnetic field takes between 1,000 and 10,000 years to reverse, and in the process, it greatly diminishes before it re-aligns. "It's not a sudden flip, but a slow process, during which the field strength becomes weak, very probably the field becomes more complex and might show more than two poles for a while, and then builds up in strength and [aligns] in the opposite direction," said Monika Korte, the scientific director of the Niemegk Geomagnetic Observatory at GFZ Potsdam in Germany.choff wrote:Carrington event, anyone? Earth's magnetic field is getting past due for a flip as well, can't be very good for the grid.
Earth's magnetic field is fading. Today it is about 10 percent weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss started keeping tabs on it in 1845, scientists say.
If the trend continues, the field may collapse altogether and then reverse. Compasses would point south instead of north.
Not surprisingly, Hollywood has already seized on this new twist in the natural-disaster genre. Last year Tinseltown released The Core, a film in which the collapse of Earth's magnetic field leads to massive electrical storms, blasts of solar radiation, and birds incapable of navigation.
Entertainment value aside, the portrayal wasn't accurate, according to scientists who say the phenomenon of Earth's fading magnetic field is no cause to worry.
"The field has reversed many times in the past, and life didn't stop," said Gary Glatzmaier, an earth scientist and magnetic field expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Glatzmaier is keeping an eye on our planet's weakening magnetic field as he tries to learn more about how Earth's geodynamo works. The geodynamo is the mechanism that creates our planet's magnetic field, maintains it, and causes it to reverse.
Magnetic Shield
Earth's geodynamo creates a magnetic field that shields most of the habited parts of our planet from charged particles that come mostly from the sun. The field deflects the speeding particles toward Earth's Poles.
Without our planet's magnetic field, Earth would be subjected to more cosmic radiation. The increase could knock out power grids, scramble the communications systems on spacecraft, temporarily widen atmospheric ozone holes, and generate more aurora activity.
A number of Earth's creatures, including some birds, turtles, and bees, rely on Earth's magnetic field to navigate. The field is in constant flux, scientists say. But even without it, life on Earth will continue, researchers say.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... field.html