I guess mine is stuck in the ON position. I thought his (her?) post smacked of sarcasm, but I was waiting for confirmation.

SARCASM PEOPLE!

Which I got.

Welcome to the BAUT, Nanotrex.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Sorry, I wasn't really thinking about how people would take that when I wrote it, that's why I constantly contradicted in the theories I supplied (remember yeah, who's gonna survive that and homosapien appeared 400 000 years after the last reversal) I guess I didn't make it as clear as it seemed to me, but I'm crazy so anyway... Yeah, I know reversals occur, but I don't believe a complete aplocolypse follows in it's wake as most websites you find do. Killed the Dinosaurs? I don't think so, the entering sentence for that paragraph was intended to be the most sarcasic of the lot. As for evolution? Maybe it significantly changes the odd species so that they die and are preceded by a new, similar but different species, but I don't think it occurs on the scale of what the article writer believes. (If you want the link to his page about it WARNING VERY LONG AND VERY BORING WEBSITE AHEAD!! http://www.livingcosmos.com/k-t.htm ) But this is pretty much falsified as death by ionising radiation would show in the fossils.

I'll remember to add the odd lol, jokes, and smiley to what i'm being sarcastic about.

Anyway, the idea's ridiculous. Dinosaurs killed by microwaves?

How did they set the timers? How did they open the doors? And just how many microwave TV diners does it take to feed a hungry T Rex?

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Andy

Manager Ukweatherworld

1,000,000 ...

NEXT Question?

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

Dinosaurs killed by microwaves?

I could've killed a dinosaur with a microwave. You just have to drop it from high enough.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Ok, so how high up do you have to raise the dinosaur?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Weren't you paying attention? 1,000,000.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Depends. Are there betting limits on your game?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Heh. I'm usually pretty quick to assume sarcasm, have often said so and have been repeatedly been rebuked by posters that weren't joking. I have to say, I didn't pick up the sarcasm this time. But can you blame me? I mean, take a look at this post:

First page worldwide to TOTALLY expose 9/11 and what was truly genius

I'm pretty sure that person is serious.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

A key reason we know the poles of the earth reverse is a computer simulation ran by scientists to understand why the earths magnetic field didn't fade away billions of years ago.

When the simulation resulted in a polar reversal they're weren't afraid, they were estatic!

The simulated reversal occured over about 1200 years, and real-life studies have revealed that the magnetic field didn't change overnight, it also took about 1000 years to occur.

It's not like you'll be sitting there, and suddenly go "I jsut felt something, did the poles flip?". No, it will occur over many generations, so no one will live long enough to see the poles reverse.

Never understood the confusion, myself. Sun goes through this on regular basis. Sure the Sun ain't the Earth, but I'd still call that a neat example of what a (magnetic!) pole reversal can look like.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

OK, take a record of where the magnetic north pole is right now. Now, in 50 years (if you're still around) check where it is. The pole would have most likely drifted south quite some distance. So... in a couple thousand years the poles would have flipped, hoorah!

Not exactly. As I hear it, the existing kinks in the magnetic field lines get more and more kinked, until the field collapses completely....then after some time (hundreds to thousands of years) it re-establishes, probably in the other direction.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

A destabalised magnetic field for hundreds of years... yeah, that sounds survivable. *sarcasm*

It quite clearly is, though; it's happened many times in the past and life survived.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

What kills you, Nanotrex? This isn't like "The Core." No microwave beams are going to be melting bridges. Sure, higher cancer rates. But it isn't instant death for surface life.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Again, this seems to be another ambiguous statement. It could be taken that you are being sarcastic that it is survivable, but from your earlier statements I assume you know that it most certainly is survivable?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Whoops. I should have refreshed my memory of this thread before making my comment. Apologies.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

As I recall, the average time between magnetic reversals is on the order of a hundred thousand years -- quite a short time, geologically.

However, there has been no pole reversal for something like 400,000 years. That means we're overdue, and also that all of human history has occurred during the current polarity. The last reversal was experienced by early humans much like ourselves.

Geico cave men, perhaps?

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Is polar shift the technical term for the exchange of magnetic north and south? I heard some idiot blabbering about polar shift being the reason for global warming. however he seemed to think that polar shift was the axis of rotation changing.

What he was describing seems to be more like the chandler wobble. but that has only 400 day period and means only something to astronomers making measurements.

The most 'wild' change in the earth's movement is the precession (but that has a period of some 26,000 years). I was wondering though if precession (despite it's slow change), might have any major impact on global climate?

(Note: this is separate from global warming. i know that precession is not the reason for global warming)

Welcome to BAUT quidproquo2004.

Pole shift is commonly used for the exchange or changes (sometimes it is not just a neat exchange) of the magnetic poles. In normal science it does not refer to changes to the rotational axis, though there are woo-woo uses of the term that way. And I agree, I don't see how this would have anything to do with global warming.

I have also read stuff that has associated climate changes to some of the long term cycles, such as precession, but I don't recall specifics off the top of my head.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

You should also be aware that there is a group of, um, true believers who use "pole shift" to mean actual reversal of the rotational poles. These folks are associated with the "Planet X" gang. You can find lots of threads about that in this forum.

Needless to say, this is NOT mainstream science.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I suspect the motivation is something a little simpler. These believers have some idea about the past that they wish to support. Maybe it's the existence of Atlantis, maybe it's the existence of psychic powers makes them feel special, and Cayce is claimed to be significant because of his supposed psychic powers, and Cayce also made claims about the pole reversal, and because Cayce was so smart about the psychic thing, he must be right about the pole reversal. Maybe they have fallen for the claims about flash-frozen mammoths having been found and want to justify how that could happen to support their source for the claim against "naysayers and deniers". Planet X, the Mayan Calendar, magnetic pole reversals, Nibiru, Venus shooting out of Jupiter, dinosaurs on the Ark, whatever - all of these claims are someone seeking justification and support for their own personal means for self-validation. They take some idea floating around the public consciousness or some newly discovered scientific premise, role these into their own stories without understanding the scientific merit. The scientific element is just a gimmick, a toehold, the barest thread of connection to reality to serve as their link to "evidence", so they can claim their position is validated.

Not entirely true. Paper books have one distinct advantage over silica optical discs and microfilm - you do not need any special equipment, especially electricity, in order to read them. Yes, paper is flammable, but cellusose won't stand up to heat much, either. Paper can be sealed in a dry, cool, non-oxygen environment and remain stable for long times. Of course, stone carvings will last longer and are much more durable, but they also take so much longer to copy.

I'm sure anyone over the age of 30 has kicking around the house some formerly useful data they can no longer read...whether it is in the proprietary format of a discontinued computer program, or on a 5 1/4" drive, or worse yet on a drive that was formatted for some other machine...heck, I have notes for a novel on the micro-cassette tapes of a Workslate; like I'll ever see those notes again!

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

So much sarcasm here I don't know what to think. Best take things one at a time.

Question 1: Is there any geophysical basis (read proof) for the concept of a pole shift? (ie where magnetic north pole becomes magnetic south and vice versa.)

Thanks and no sarcasm please. A straight question requires a straight answer.

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Think About It

A pole shift is conceptually possible -- there's some discussion about what may have caused the extreme axial tilt of Uranus, for instance. However, such an event would return a planet to an extremely primitive condition. By that I don't mean dinosaurs; I mean somewhat _molten_.

Of course there is some semantic confusion here. After all, I can with a snap of my fingers induce a "pole shift," as long as I accompany it with a reversal of spin at the same time. Suddenly, the planet is upside-down and spinning counter-clockwise. All we have to do is rename North and South.

The phrase "pole shift" appears to describe a change of the axis of rotation in reference to the orbital plane. For some reason the assumption seems to be the poles reverse; basically, we end up with an Earth that for all intents and purposes experiences identical seasons et al. Such a condition doesn't seem particularly worrisome. The problem is getting there from here.

A simple experiment will suffice. Pull the wheel from a bicycle. Holding by the hub, spin it up to a nice speed. Now try to tilt this spinning disk. That resistance (gyroscopic effect) is what any attempt to shift the Earth's poles has to deal with.

To make this shift you have to 1) apply sufficient energy, 2) dissipate the waste heat, 3) hold together the (on this scale) loosely-connected parts of the Earth while you do so.

On a sufficiently long time scale you might get away with it. On anything fast enough for the current generation to be concerned about, you'd basically rip the crust off and churn the remaining mantle until it glowed like a small star. Mercury would look downright hospitable after it happened.

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Thanks nomuse. I've clarified my request somewhat - I'm only really concerned at this stage with a shift of the magnetic poles. Thus I assume the tilt and rotation of the earth are unchanged and that somehow a situation has arisen where a compass that would normally point to what we would call north points instead to south.

I'd really like to know if there is any geophysical data that confirms this has happened on Earth. For example, I think I once saw a documentary where a fault line (mid-Atlantic rift?) exposed deposition layers (magma?) within which it could be confirmed that the earth's magnetic field was switching over at fairly regular intervals.

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Think About It

That is all correct to my understanding, see the Wikipedia article for more info on it.

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"Any Sufficiently Analyzed Magic is Indistinguishable from SCIENCE!" -Agatha Heterodyne

"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it." -Florence Ambrose

The pole shift idea is simply a modern rendition of the ancient Great Year firmly rooted in astronomy/astrology and myth/religion.

I think it has become so popular because the earth's axis wobbles as if a spinning top, to and fro, over the course of roughly 26K yrs - precession of the equinoxes.
Every 12k yrs or so, it seemingly changes direction.
Catastrophic earth changes took place some 12K yrs ago, evidenced by rivers, lakes, mountains, etc., and attested to by countless ancient texts separated by space and time.

Mythic and religio-historical texts are replete with catastrophism and the passing of various "Ages" more often than not based on astronomical events.

Curious how the Greek myths, and no doubt those of the cultures on which they based their "western" thinking, parallels the mayan notion that an age is about to end, with a "new age" set begin.

The ancients were sky watchers, the world over.
Is it not possible these are vague remembrances of actual earth changes brought on by some astronomical event?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

The main difference between the pole shift idea and myths is that there is actually scientific proof that the magnetic poles do change. The outflows in the sea floor show the Earth's magnetic field fluctuates periodically. So not exactly a "modern rendition of a myth".

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Spike
:)