Is Earth's Magnetic Field Reversing?

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Earth’s magnetic field protects us from deadly space radiation. What if it were drastically weakened, as a precursor to flipping upside down? I mean, it has before … many, many times..

Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Matt O'Dowd
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer
Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber
Produced By: Kornhaber Brown

Special Thanks to Lathrop Lab at University of Maryland:

Check Out Lathrop Lab's YouTube Channel to learn more about their 3-meter experiment that models the Earth's core:

Spaceship Earth has a literal deflector shield. A geomagnetic field. Lines of magnetic force, forged by currents in the planet’s molten core, erupt from the surface close to the north south geographic poles, connecting to each other to wreath the planet in a dipole field, like a gigantic bar magnet. Magnetic fields exert a force on moving charged particles, causing them to spiral around those force lines. That’s helpful, because Earth is constantly bombarded by very fast moving charged particles, especially coming from the Sun. Our magnetic field deflects the worst of these. Not all planets are so lucky. Mars, with its solid core, has no such shield – and so the red planet’s atmosphere was stripped away by the solar wind billions of years ago.

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سلطان الخليفي

[nolanwestrich]

It's America's turn to be upside down! [laughs in Australian]

[dik]

The visual effects person deserves applause.

[Andy-dffj]

The lack of past extinction events associated with magnetic field reversals is comforting until you take into account that no previous species or even civilizations were hopelessly reliant on a power grid.
That dependence makes modern man exceptionally vulnerable. Widespread and persistent power outages would cause absolute chaos.

[TurboSol]

Fun fact, the magnetic field started moving in opposite directions in 1859 and this just so happened to be the year of the Carrington event, a massive x-class solar flare hit earth causing auroras around the entire globe, it was so bright that people were able to read their newspapers outside at night. Anyway, that flare seemed to trigger the movement of the magnetic field of earth and it's movement has been accelerating ever since.

[doubledose]

"are you going to bake to death from cosmic radiation when the shift happens? Well, we'll come back to that."

[manonthedollar]

"Surely [scientific statement]?"
Me: "Oh!"
"Actually, no."
Me: "Oh."

[Jammyhorse]

When I see Penguins passing Polar bears somewhere along the equator I’ll know what’s

[musicalfringe]

I love the way Matt brings up the possibility of our biosphere's imminent extinction and then says "we'll get back to that later".

[cwp]

As an old-timey sea captain once said: "I'm so confused!"

[vikranttyagiRN]

Before watching this video: I think I understand how earth's magnetic field works
After: Oh no, no i dont.

[_Woo]

"The question you should be asking is, how does this all work?"
The question I'm asking: Are we all gonna die?

[mikes]

I've been trying to tell people this for several years and 99.9% still have no clue about our poles moving

[MervynPartin]

One of the very best explanations of how the earth's magnetic field is generated that I have heard. I can see the similarities with dynamos (for example automobile dc generators, pre-alternators) in that they relied upon residual magnetism to self excite. If the residual magnetism was lost, the dynamo could be "flashed" with a battery to reinstate the field, but get it the wrong way round and the dynamo output would be reversed, even with the same direction of rotation.

[peccatumDei]

I remember reading a paper about one of those computer models years ago, and it describing that "messy" intermediate period where many north and south poles pop up and then disappear. Like this PBS Space Time episode that paper said it was too soon to know if the poles were starting to reverse, but it did point to an increasing number of magnetic anomalies. It also mentioned that as far as danger from cosmic radiation goes, the hot spots would be the boundaries between those mini poles, but that those boundaries would move relatively quickly.

[imstupidbut]

“I’ll come back to the current situation and whether we should be concerned” bruh

[theroguetomato]

Executive summary: "We don't know. We don't even know how it happens."

[dansdoves]

I fly pigeons although not from great distances just 50 miles at the most. There were times last year that caused me to lose an unusual amount of birds. Seasoned birds that were well homed in. I probably lost 30 birds or so in a 6 month period. I'm taking into account hawks and other natural type calamities they could face on their way. I didn't get into it that deep but from what I gathered from a few others they were dealing with the same thing. I didn't try to correlate or look to see if there were any magnetic anomalies during this time period it was just kind of a theory I had as to why I was losing so many birds. Animals such as homing pigeons etc would be the first signs of something like a shift about to happen.

[olsongl]

I'm mostly concerned for the old-timey sea captains. It's tough enough getting around on a peg leg, even with a working compass.

[tylerv]

I am finally all caught up! Been watching these videos, starting with the earliest one, for a year now. Got through 4 years of videos... holy crap what a journey. Time to get a T-shirt I guess

[ivansturmgeschutz]

the sun flips poles every 11 years like clockwork.