Magnetic Force

“The earth’s magnetic force is moving! The earth’s magnetic force is moving!” The cry is a little bit like the little chicken, ‘Henny Penny,” (or was it “Chicken Little”) that yelled, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

By any name, in any culture, the fable is about a little chicken that believes the sky is falling down because an acorn falls on her head. There are many version as it has been passed on and on from ears to lips from lips to ear from lips to ears over the years, but in true fable fashion, it always ends with a moral of some kind. The most common moral is “do not believe everything you hear.”

In the story, the chicken jumps to a conclusion because of a little acorn, whips the entire barnyard into hysteria and the next thing you know there’s some carnivorous fiend, (usually the fox) that is attempting to manipulate the situation into his own personal lunch. Like the Little Red Hen, or the Chicken Little story, we see mass hysteria forming today as media informs us of all the dangers there are in the world. "Global Warming!" they cry, along with things like ‘The earth’s magnetic force is moving!” Anything is game as long as it creates mass hysteria that moves people into action against the evil threat.

So what is up with the magnetic field of earth? It is moving? Will it's movement be the demise of life upon the earth?

The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831, and when it was reassessed in 1904, explorers found it had moved by 50 km! (31 miles) More recently, Peter Olsen, geophysicist from John Hopkins University in Maryland who has studied the issue commented, “The Earth's magnetic field has been our protector for millennia, and now, it appears, it's about to go away.”

(Go away?) How serious is this?

According to Olsen, “…its strength is rapidly decreasing, so fast that at the current rate it will last only into the next millennium.” (He said, millennium" and that means one thousand years.)

Even the BBC News December 12, 2005 reported that “The Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting away from North America so fast that it could end up in Siberia within 50 years.” Other researchers like The Space Science Institute are more conservative; they anticipate a reversal, but they say, “Sometime in the next 10,000 years.”

Who is a person to believe?

he PBS television series, NOVA, on November 18, 2003 first televised their program called Magnetic Storm: When Compasses Point South. In this program we we told that paleomagnetists report that reversals in the Earth's magnetic field are as common as ice ages, and that such reversals from North to South and South to North have happened “hundreds of times in our planet's history.” The NOVA website, complete with a guide for teachers to use in their classrooms, provoke people into inquiry by asking the question, “Is the magnetic field protecting earth from deadly radiation about to reverse direction or disappear altogether?”

Well, it depends on who you think the expert is.

It can be unsettling to learn of global phenomena that are "inherently unstable," " unpredictable" as is the case with the Earth's magnetic field, they say as they shout like the 1920's newspaper boys, “The Earth’s magnetic field is moving!” Students from coast to coast now, not only have to worry about crime, air pollution, water pollution, global warming, overpopulation and ozone depletion, and the failing economy, they can worry about the effects on our lives as magnetic north completely disappears too.

The teaching materials for teachers to use with their classrooms (available at the NOVA webpage) tries to offer the now frieghtened reader at least some comfort when they say, “You could perhaps take comfort in the knowledge that these reversals happen infrequently—on average every 250,000 years" only to revers it, "—but maybe not when you consider that it's been over 700,000 years since the last reversal, and the next one may be currently underway.” Offering comfort and then taking it away is bound to leave the average student believing that the whole world they’ve barely discovered themselves in their youth is falling apart at the seams!

NOVA’s materials suggest catastrophe is about to fall upon the earth yet they do offer tools to educators to “discuss with students how Earth changes over time” and lead the classroom in a discussion about “other examples of change.” It’s the kind of thing that makes one wonder if the students are really learning facts and being given an opportunity to actually think for themselves as they discuss science, or if they are being cohearsed in their thinking by this strange implementation of fear.

In spite of the initial fears such information given to the masses, it appears there still may be hope for earth and it's magnetic fields for scientist also believe that there are various electrical currents created as the earth rotates They think that somehow the high temperatures in the Earth's core continues to create more magnetic fields. They say that despite the fluctuations we can see, the magnetic field seems to be something that is constantly replenished as the earth spins in orbit with it’s solid inner iron core surrounded by molten iron and nickel.

Most scientists believe that the magnetic field has possibly reversed sometime in the past, but most of what we humans really understand about the mechanics of it all is not concretely evidenced. For example, no one has actually seen the inner core of the earth, or even ever taken a sample. It’s theoretical, based on things we do know and understand.

Gary Glatzmaier, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences of the University of CA is responsible for a lot of the computer models of the earth’s magnetic field. He is a proponent of the idea that there may be a reversal of the Earth's magnetic field sometime in the future, and he says, the flipping of the Earth's fading magnetic field is no cause for great concern. HE is quoted in National Geographic News, September 27, 2004, saying, "The field has reversed many times in the past, and life didn't stop."