You would think that after all these billions of years, whatever molten metals flowing around would’ve have stabilized and be predictable flow, thus the magnetic poles wouldn’t be moving. But if anything, the movement of the poles have been going faster and faster? If someone can explain, that would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
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The movement of the metal fluids in the Earth’s core is actually very *un*predictable. Fluid flows are already complicated – look at, say, the flow of air around the atmosphere – but adding in electromagnetism in a conductive fluid makes it way worse. This sort of flow – technically called *magnetohydrodynamics*, try saying that ten times fast – is even more complicated than the already-complicated dynamics of fluid flow or magnetism. And, like most systems with even somewhat complicated dynamics, the flows are often chaotic (as they are in the Earth’s core). (“Chaotic” here is in the mathematical sense, which means, roughly, “small differences in initial states lead to large future differences”.)
The magnetic poles have been speeding up their movement in recent years, but that’s not a long term trend. They wobble around a bunch.
The movement of the Earth’s mantle is far from completely understood and some of the questions about inner earth still go unanswered evem by the most prominent scientists. However, we do know the movement of the crust into the mantle is cyclical. Different parts of the crust subduct under eachother and then take a “dive” down to the mantle where they are then turned back into a molten state. The Earth has had alot of time to mellow out, yet we still see seismic activity and the movement of large quantities of magma on a daily basis around the world. It’s (obviously) extremely difficult to make observations of how the Earth’s mantle and crust interact, and impossible to determine exactly what’s going on at the core atm. But the simple answer to your question is: the poles move because the layers are all constantly (but slowly) in motion.
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