Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Scientists Are Tracking The Weakening Of The Earths Magnetic Field

How Scientists Are Tracking the Dangerous Weakening of Earth's Magnetic Field

The Earth is blanketed by a magnetic field. It’s what makes compasses point north, and protects our atmosphere from continual bombardment from space by charged particles such as protons. Without a magnetic field, our atmosphere would slowly be stripped away by harmful radiation, and life would almost certainly not exist as it does today.

You might imagine the magnetic field is a timeless, constant aspect of life on Earth, and to some extent you would be right. But Earth’s magnetic field actually does change. Every so often — on the order of several hundred thousand years or so — the magnetic field has flipped. North has pointed south, and vice versa. And when the field flips it also tends to become very weak.


The poles have reversed frequently over the history of the planet, but the last reversal is in the distant past, some 780,000 years ago. The rapid decay of the recent magnetic field, and its pattern of decay, naturally raises the question of what was happening prior to the last 160 years.

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