Massive Magnetic Anomaly Under Africa

nivek

As Above So Below
Massive Magnetic Anomaly Discovered Under Africa

The Earth’s magnetic field continues to be a source of mystery for geologists and planetary scientists. Thanks to improved techniques of detecting measuring the geomagnetic field, scientists now know that the Earth’s magnetic field is weakening – despite having no explanation for the phenomenon.

Other studies have found cracks opening in the magnetic field, potentially allowing more cosmic radiation to bombard us unfortunate saps here on the planet’s surface. To make magnetic matters more mysterious (and terrifying), a massive new magnetic anomaly has been detected in the southern hemisphere under Africa.

What does this mean for the Earth’s magnetic field and the living things who depend on it for protection?


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Will Santa have to find a new home when the poles reverse?


Unfortunately, we don’t know yet. But no news is better than bad news, right?

The region of the Earth’s magnetic field under study is known as the South Atlantic Anomaly and stretches under the southern Atlantic ocean from Chile to Zimbabwe. In this region, the geomagnetic field comes closer to the Earth’s surface than anywhere else on Earth, reaching down to an altitude of 200 kilometres, or 120 miles.

This makes it a prime site for studying the magnetic field since the low altitude means the effects of the field can be detected much easier. In the case of discovering this new anomaly, researchers from the University of Rochester examined 1,000-year-old pottery made by the Bantu people to search for magnetic minerals baked into the clay which serve as a type of record.

The minerals in the pottery revealed similar magnetic anomalies occurred in 400-450 AD, 700-750 AD, and sometime between 1225-1550 AD.


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University of Rochester Earth and Environmental Sciences professor John Tarduno led this new study of the South Atlantic Anomaly. In a university press release announcing the discovery, Tarduno says while its too early to draw conclusions about pole reversal or any type of cataclysmic event, this anomaly deserves serious study so that scientists and world leaders can be aware of any potential harmful effects:
We were looking for recurrent behavior of anomalies because we think that’s what is happening today and causing the South Atlantic Anomaly. We’re getting stronger evidence that there’s something unusual about the core-mantle boundary under Africa that could be having an important impact on the global magnetic field. The possibility of a continued decay in the strength of the magnetic field is a societal concern that merits continued study and monitoring.
There is a growing body of evidence suggesting Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed many times over the planet’s history, or even that Earth once had more than two magnetic poles. It’s still unknown what effect(s) a pole reversal might have today in an age dependent on electronics.
 

Sheltie

Fratty and out of touch.
:shock:We seem to face an awfully large number of potential disasters, considering our relatively short lifespan on this planet.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
There is this crazy illusion that the environment of the earth is constant.

There are a number of liars that promote this deceit to further their agenda.

The earth isn't constant. The planet positions are constantly changing the forces on the earth. The amount of energy received from the sun is never the same. There are annual, decadal, centenial, and millenial scale ocean and insolation cycles.

Further the magnetics of the earth are due to the fact the outer core is moving over the outside of the solid inner core at about 100 mph. This creates incredible eddy currents in the outer liquid core and thus the magnetic field, which presumably is forcing the core to rotate slowly backward.

Nothing in this system is stable and nothing is carved in stone.

The best prediction I saw says we will move to a 4 pole system.

As I remember the last time I looked at this, worse case in the loss of the magnetic field people at sea level will get Denver level UV. If you have sufficient ozone pollution in your city it won't make any difference.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
What about the Van Allen belts.. Wont they come crashing down and fry us all,, in case of total loss ?
I like this answer from Quora:
Actually the radiation belts are a negative side effect of the earths magnetic field as well as the Suns magnetic field. As cosmic particles collide with particles in the atmosphere they decay into energetic protons while the outer belt is mostly electrons made in geomagnetic storms.

if it didn't exist we could launch more satellites or have larger space stations without the worry of perpetual radiation exposure as for earth there would be no negative consequences to the loss of the energy.


The belts are more of a nuisance than anything else.

Archive of NASA IMAGE Space Science Questions and Answers
The belts are not important to life on the surface of the Earth, but you can turn this around and say that, if there were no belts, the earth would not have a magnetic field. This means that cosmic ray particles would be free to collide with the earth's atmosphere in greater numbers, and from these you would get a higher background level of secondary 'air shower neutrons' which would lead to higher background radiation doses on the surface. The Belts do not directly impact human life, but if they were gone, this would imply that other effects would have to be in effect as a consequence of what the larger system would look like.

From what I can tell the magnetic field/loss of belts is part of the general "all change is bad" alarmism thing.

It would increase the loss of atmosphere so the earth will be uninhabitable one billion years from now. So there is that. But if we can't fix the problem in a billion years we have other issues.

The pressure at the earth's surface is 15 psi. That is 10546 kg/m2. The atmosphere above us is the equivalent 10 meters of water. Punching through it is really hard, and the effect on background radiation is going to be minimal. After all you can safely swim in a spent fuel pool with several thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel about 20 feet beneath you (only about 6 feet of water above the assemblies are needed to keep radiation at a safe level).

Do we care? No.

We don't care if the background radiation goes up 10x-50x. At 100x the US radiation would be 360 Sieverts and you would find some studies that indicate that level might be harmful, but some studies would show benefit, and some would be inconclusive. From what I can tell loss of the belts won't even double the background radiation of 3.6 Sieverts in the US. Denver has double the average US background radiation and they aren't dropping like flies.

We don't care if the atmosphere is gone in a billion years either.


Like I said it is just alarmism. Alarmism is just a tool to push their agenda. Scared people are easy to herd so some people like to keep us alarmed.

If you are a sheep you should listen to the alarmists and be worried. That is what sheep do.
 
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3FEL9

Islander
The belts are more of a nuisance than anything else.

I was thinking more in the line of what happens when magnetic fields collapse.. The transient voltage spike that gonna be induced somewhere. we might need a freewheel diode. A ginormous one.

Nah,, I stopped worry few years back..
 
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CasualBystander

Celestial
I was thinking more in the line of what happens when magnetic fields collapse.. The transient voltage spike that gonna be induced somewhere.

Nah,, I stopped worry few years back..

When the fields collapse over several decades or centuries the dB/dt induced voltage is going to be almost unmeasurable.

People look at these calculus terms and just don't understand them. dB is the change in magnetic field. dt is the change in time. dt is in seconds, dB is in Tesla.

The earth's magnetic field depending on latitude is 30 μT to 60 μT

If dt is billions or trillions of seconds and the change in B is in the micro-something-or-other-range, you don't care about induced voltage.

As a bonus this is a frog floating in a 10T (30000+ times the earth field strength) magnetic field.

 
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3FEL9

Islander
When the fields collapse over several decades or centuries the dB/dt induced voltage is going to be almost unmeasurable.

People look at these calculus terms and just don't understand them. dt is in seconds, dB is in Tesla.

The earth's magnetic field depending on latitude is 30 μT to 60 μT

If dt is billions or trillions of seconds and the change in B is in the micro-something-or-other-range you don't care about induced voltage.

I cant stop thinking of my high-school physics lector who didnt agree with my understanding of the Suns irradiation down on Earth.
He gave me a simular answer,lol but it was something to do with scale and m2.

But I agree. I was thinking of an instant collapse
 
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CasualBystander

Celestial
I cant stop thinking of my high-school physics lector who didnt agree with my understanding of the Suns irridation down on Earth.
He gave me a simular answer,lol but it was something to do with scale and m3..

But I agree. I was thinking of an instant collapse

Huh? Solar radiation at the surface of the Sun is about 6.33×10**7 W/m2

Solar radiation at the earth orbit is 1365 W/m2.

Solar radiation at the ground, on average, is about 230 W/m2. About 70 W/m2 is reflected into space, about 160 w/m2 is absorbed, and about 55-58 W/m2, depending on who you ask, is emitted as "green house gas global warming infrared black body radiation".

Note the rest of the 160 is lost through evaporation or convection.

"Scale" on the earth is pretty much limited to fish and lizards. m3 would be volume and radiation absorption is a surface (m2) effect. Not sure what your lector was talking about.

As far as the voltage, your ignition coil uses Tesla shorted in submilliseconds to produce thousands of volts.
 
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3FEL9

Islander
Me Typo, it was m2

I remember now,lol I said the Earth was round, and not every m2 was 100 % aligned perpendicular to the Sun.
He almost fainted
 

Castle-Yankee54

Celestial
There is a growing body of evidence suggesting Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed many times over the planet’s history, or even that Earth once had more than two magnetic poles. It’s still unknown what effect(s) a pole reversal might have today in an age dependent on electronics.

Yes there have been numerous magnetic pole reversals......except none have happened in the last 780,000 years.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
Me Typo, it was m2

I remember now,lol I said the Earth was round, and not every m2 was 100 % aligned perpendicular to the Sun.
He almost fainted

Well, all of this is deceit at some level. The earth doesn't receive average radiation. The equator receives more because of Cosine of angle to sun thing and everywhere receives 0 to 100% of full radiation depending on time of day. The planet revolves so the surface is dark half the time. The received radiation is sometimes blocked by clouds.

The only time the surface receives 230-240 W/m2 is in passing from one extreme to the other, since most areas get over 1000 W/m2 peak during the summer.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
Yes there have been numerous magnetic pole reversals......except none have happened in the last 780,000 years.

Pole Reversal Happens All The (Geologic) Time
Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. A reversal happens over hundreds or thousands of years, and it is not exactly a clean back flip. Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process. Scientists estimate reversals have happened at least hundreds of times over the past three billion years. And while reversals have happened more frequently in "recent" years, when dinosaurs walked Earth a reversal was more likely to happen only about every one million years.
...
Another doomsday hypothesis about a geomagnetic flip plays up fears about incoming solar activity. This suggestion mistakenly assumes that a pole reversal would momentarily leave Earth without the magnetic field that protects us from solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun. But, while Earth's magnetic field can indeed weaken and strengthen over time, there is no indication that it has ever disappeared completely. A weaker field would certainly lead to a small increase in solar radiation on Earth – as well as a beautiful display of aurora at lower latitudes - but nothing deadly. Moreover, even with a weakened magnetic field, Earth's thick atmosphere also offers protection against the sun's incoming particles.


Well, yeah it has been a while since a switch, but it won't happen in our lifetime either since it takes a while.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It likely would cause some problems if it happened in the next 10 years......but it won't cause a mass extinction.

I agree, even a sudden reversal will not cause any extinction, but it sure would temporarily screw up our navigational technology, it could cause some human deaths because of our technology...
 

Castle-Yankee54

Celestial
I agree, even a sudden reversal will not cause any extinction, but it sure would temporarily screw up our navigational technology, it could cause some human deaths because of our technology...

Actually thousands would likely die.....but a lot of the technology like GPS on the roadways would just get a lot of people confused.

The major fatalities would probably come from air traffic and shipping if it happened suddenly.
 

spacecase0

earth human
watching the weather maps,
it seems like some of the weather systems locate themselves around the magnetic anomalies
so I wonder how much this pole reversal (no matter how slow) will change the weather in some areas
 
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