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Earth’s Magnetic Field is Acting up and Geologists Don’t Know Why

posted by martyb on Sunday January 13 2019, @02:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the Magnetic-north!=north-pole dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Something strange is going on at the top of the world. Earth’s north magnetic pole has been skittering away from Canada and towards Siberia, driven by liquid iron sloshing within the planet’s core. The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move.

On 15 January, they are set to update the World Magnetic Model, which describes the planet’s magnetic field and underlies all modern navigation, from the systems that steer ships at sea to Google Maps on smartphones.

The most recent version of the model came out in 2015 and was supposed to last until 2020 — but the magnetic field is changing so rapidly that researchers have to fix the model now. “The error is increasing all the time,” says Arnaud Chulliat, a geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 13 2019, @06:06PM (7 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Sunday January 13 2019, @06:06PM (#785950)

    As I recall we also have an additional pole forming in the Indian Ocean, along with several other anomalies suggesting that the Earth's magnetic field is on the verge of collapsing into a chaotic mess as the poles prepare to flip. At least by geological timescales anyway - we might remain on the verge for millenia before it happens.

    Might be a good time to stock up on sunscreen - when the magnetosphere collapses, the ozone layer will likely be stripped way down by the solar wind in short order.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @08:29PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 13 2019, @08:29PM (#785995)

    Until recently sunscreen selectively blocked only the wavelengths that caused sunburn, but not skin cancer. Since people's bodies werent able to warn them they were getting dangerous amounts of exposure, people got too much sun with too little tan. So skin cancer rates have skyrocketed. It is almost exactly like the obesity epidemic caused by advocating low-fat (ie, high carb) diets. So watch out.

    In the U.S. in 1935, one’s estimated lifetime risk of melanoma was 1 in 1,500 [4]. In the U.S. in the year 2000, the lifetime risk of melanoma was estimated at 1 in 75 persons. In Australia, the lifetime risk has been estimated at 1 in 25 [4]. These stark numbers have placed melanoma in the category of an “epidemic.”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20541680 [nih.gov]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @07:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @07:44AM (#786344)

      Until recently sunscreen selectively blocked only the wavelengths that caused sunburn, but not skin cancer.

      citation required

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 13 2019, @09:12PM (4 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday January 13 2019, @09:12PM (#786015) Homepage
    I recommend latitudes starting with a '6', but am too lazy to do the trig that demonstrates by how much it's an improvement.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 14 2019, @01:02AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday January 14 2019, @01:02AM (#786160) Journal

      It varies as the sine of the latitude, IIRC. So sin(66).

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday January 14 2019, @09:19AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday January 14 2019, @09:19AM (#786378) Homepage
        That's the insolation (or anything else incoming from the sun) per unit surface area ratio, because of the tilt. However, the interations with the atmosphere scale with the apparent thickness of the atmosphere at that latitude, and those rays have to cut through a thicker slice of atmosphere to even get to the ground, so there's a further attenuation of the strength.

        Which raises an interesting question - has the aurora record changed significantly, and does it corroborate the magnetometers' readings?
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 14 2019, @02:08AM (1 child)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday January 14 2019, @02:08AM (#786218)

      Does Isla Santa Cruz @ 0.64 degrees South count?

      --
      🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday January 14 2019, @09:09AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday January 14 2019, @09:09AM (#786375) Homepage
        As long as you carry a tin-foil parasol, sure.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves