The topic of magnetism came up in our class, and in this lecture, my teacher said that the north geographic pole in our compass (or magnets in general) points towards the south magnetic pole of Earth. Adding the fact that our magnetic field flips every hundred thousands of years, how will it affect us and our daily living? The most I can think of is that our current compasses will become obsolete. What are your thoughts?
Thank you for answering!!
In: Planetary Science
The flip won’t cause much chaos for the human world. Migratory birds will be deeply affected.
The bigger issue is that between the flip there is potentially a weakening of the magnetic field. It will still protect US from most solar radiation but it will let more through. Satellites will be more likely to get damaged from the radiation which might lead to some communication or GPS issues for a decade or so after the flip. The earth will lose some ozone to the increased radiation, but that will be recovered as well. We may see slightly higher rates of cancer on the surface, but overall the health of humans won’t be affected too much.
Edit: after further reading and looking at some comments I want to make something clear. While we generally know it does happen and what will happen, we don’t know to what degree the Earth’s magnetic field will weaken. Some estimates make it an inconvenience. Other estimates make it seem like a difficult obstacle for humanity, but one that is conquerable. It never happened before and we don’t know exactly what the core of our planet is made of, so we can’t really model it all that well. We get a range of answers and that’s the best we can do.
So all we really know is that it will happen, you will notice (if it happens during your lifetime), but it shouldn’t be world ending.
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