The North pole and South pole will switch polarity...so what will happen?

Question

Recently came across a programme on television, where they showed that every 400,000 years or so, the north and south poles switch polarities. And that it does not happen suddenly, but is a gradual process. They were not very clear on what the implications of this are.

But they showed proof of this in terms of various rocks with varying polarity in the same place. The only difference being when they were formed.

Does anyone know more on this, especially the implications.
Apparently, this switch is due now.

Answer 1

First off, the north and south poles don't even have the polarities right now, if you use a compass, the north pole actually points to an area in Canada, may be another country around that latitude. The change is always in progress though. Also, the only way that it might directly kill you is if you were in a life and death situation and you were on the spot where the north or south magnetic poles are at the time, making it useless, lol. The Effects of this aren't going to be felt by anyone in their lifetime unless they live to be about 1,000 years old. Old enough to see a change. What actually changes, however, are the magnetic poles. What your compass points to. The gravitational poles are there to stay and, as far as I know, never change. So the orbit around the sun, just like the rest of its 4.5 billion year journey through our 13.7(or so) billion year old universe, is not going to change due to the magnetic poles switching.







And, secondly, this change is much to slow for it to be felt by, or for it to effect wildlife who use the poles for navigation. Planes, ships, and electronis devices will not crash or be useless during this period (at least not because of it) because they all work fine right now, and as i said, it's constantly shifting. You were right that it will take around 400,000 years as far as I know, but it may be longer. It, however, is not going to take mere hundreds of years.

Answer 2

The switching of polarity of the North and the South pole as I understand it is due to the wobbling effect of the Earth movement.

There are three movements of the earth, they are:

1. It revolves around itself once every day.

2. It revolves around the sun once every 365.4 days

3. It has a wobbling movement resembled by changing its axis around which the earth spins. The tilted axis, which is 23.5 degrees, changes its direction and return to its position once every 26000 years (without a change in the tilted axis) resulting in changing the polar star.



Let me explain this movement, it is not simple to understand. This wobbling movement of the planet earth is very much the same as a spinning wheel (A game used by kids to rotate a wheel on the table or on ground) when the wheel reaching its last stage of its power to keep on spinning, the wheel begins to wobble by starting to moving its upper pin around a circle before the movement finally fades away and the wheel falls down. So this movement of the spinning wheel at its last stage is exactly similar to the third movement of the planet earth. The circle it creates during the wobbling movement of earth takes 26000 years, during which the polar stars is changed and another star becomes the polar star. These stars that become polar stars are those that are located at the circle of the wobbling direction of the earth. Three thousands years ago the star Tuban which is located on this circle was the polar star. The Egyptians designed their pyramid such that the star Tuban used to be observed all night from a Certain hole made in the pyramid. 12000 years from now the star Vega will become our polar star at which time the summer will begin perhaps on December 19-20, for the northern hemisphere and the winter starts in the same time at the southern hemisphere. Until one whole revolution is made and the earth turns back to its original location with respect to its direction of the spinning axis and Polaris once again becomes the polar star.

Answer 3

during the switching of polarity basicly all the magnetic devices would be useless, considering that during this period there is no real north and south magnetic pole.

It may also affect animals that use the magnetic field lines to travel across the world, they would get lost and may die........



The other thing is that during this period the magnetic field of the earth will be much weaker, and considering that this is what protect us from the hazardous rays of the sun, we may be irriadate by the sun during this period





the change of polarity as nothing to do with the ice melting, and it would not have any effect on the orbit of the earth.

Answer 4

I'm not sure but I heard it meant it was going to pull the earth into a different orbit around the sun, and I don't remember if it would kill us or not.. lol the critical information I forget, ironic huh?



This is on the Mayan calendar, this is how they said the earth will be destroyed, so possibly its that. Somebody said it would be an asteroid but they're just talking out their you know what.

Answer 5

The polarity of our planet is due to its direction of spin. In order to cause the poles to change positions, the spin of our plane would have to be reversed.

Answer 6

Well the global warming situation is over exaggerated. I believe the ice is melting due to the exact question you are asking, and I believe it probably happens over a period of hundreds of years.

Answer 7

have you heard of the theory of earth wobble. well that shift will make the wobble much worse!

Answer 8

all magnetic navigation equipment will be useless and many ships, planes etc will crash