Earth's Magnetic Field Accelerating

Further to the Axiatonal Spin Anomoly, the planet's north magnetic pole is rapidly drifting, at faster than regular speed, away from North America towards Siberia.

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Earth's Magnetic Field Moving Fast

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Are we in the midst of a pole shift?

Scientists are divided about this, but earth's magnetic field has begun shifting much more rapidly than expected. Earth's magnetic pole flips approximately every 500,000 years, and it has not shifted for 780,000 years, meaning that it's overdue.

The American Geophysical Union has announced that Earth's north magnetic pole is rapidly drifting away from North America towards Siberia. This may cause Alaska to lose its Northern Lights. During a pole flip, the magnetic field around the Earth, which shields us from dangerous solar radiation, weakens and may even cease to exist, which would cause major disruptions to communications, and should there be solar flares during this time, possible serious consequences in the form of massive power blackouts, unknown weather phenomena and lethal radiation reaching earth's surface.

Pole shifts are not associated with mass extinctions, however, so this is not a likely consequence of such an event. The human world, however, with all its electrical and electronic devices, would be vulnerable to solar activity in ways that ancient life was not.

The magnetic poles are generated by liquid iron in Earth's core and are different from the geographic poles. From studies of rock, geologists know that the magnetic poles have often migrated and even flipped in the past, but why this happens is still unknown.

Earth's Magnetic Pole Drifting Quickly

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Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America and toward Siberia at such a clip that Alaska might lose its spectacular Northern Lights in the next 50 years, scientists said Thursday.

Despite accelerated movement over the past century, the possibility that Earth's modestly fading magnetic field will collapse is remote. But the shift could mean Alaska may no longer see the sky lights known as auroras, which might then be more visible in more southerly areas of Siberia and Europe.

The magnetic poles are part of the magnetic field generated by liquid iron in Earth's core and are different from the geographic poles, the surface points marking the axis of the planet's rotation.

Scientists have long known that magnetic poles migrate and in rare cases, swap places. Exactly why this happens is a mystery.

"This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada," Joseph Stoner, a paleomagnetist at Oregon State University, said Thursday at an American Geophysical Union meeting. Previous studies have shown that the strength of the Earth's magnetic shield has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years. During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 685 miles out into the Arctic, according to a new analysis by Stoner.

The rate of the magnetic pole's movement has increased in the last century compared to fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries, the Oregon researchers said.

At the present rate, the north magnetic pole could swing out of northern Canada into Siberia. If that happens, Alaska could lose its Northern Lights, which occur when charged particles streaming away from the sun interact with different gases in Earth's atmosphere.

The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831 and when it was revisited in 1904, explorers found that the pole had moved 31 miles.

For centuries, navigators using compasses had to learn to deal with the difference between magnetic and geographic north. A compass needle points to the north magnetic pole, not the geographic North Pole. For example, a compass reading of north in Oregon is about 17 degrees east of geographic north.

In the study, Stoner examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes. Since the sediments record the Earth's magnetic field at the time, scientists used carbon dating to track changes in the magnetic field.

They found that the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last thousand years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia, but it sometimes moved in other directions, too.