TURNING THE WORLD UPSIDE-DOWN

by Mike Hutcheson

Are you worried about the shift in the earth’s magnetic field??

If not, you should be!?

The magnetic field has been oscillating since time began.?

Every half million years or so the earth’s magnetic poles flip. At the moment, the North Magnetic Pole is somewhere in the white wastes of northern Canada, heading towards Siberia.?

It travelled about 50kms last year.

The South magnetic pole is in the sea to the west of Antarctica, heading towards Australia.?

Of critical and geo-physically worrying importance is the question of what will happen, when as we know, the earth’s polarity actually reverses.? Last time it happened of course there were no humans around to feel the effects.

However, extreme incidents caused by an a naturally occurring geomagnetic disturbance, or an electromagnetic pulse attack, could seriously damage significant portions of the world’s critical infrastructure, like The Cloud, the?electrical grid, telecommunications equipment, water and wastewater systems, or even transportation modes.?

I once read of an archaeologist who said it’s now easier to read the 3000-year-old hieroglyphics on an Egyptian tomb than it is to play a magnetic tape from the 1960s; playing technology now being obsolete.?

The thing that struck me then was how much faith we put in the security and long-term efficacy of modern telecommunications. If the Cloud goes down what will be the knock-on effect? Will we?go back to a communications Stone Age?

The impacts are likely to cascade in a domino effect,? initially screwing up one or more sectors, spilling over into pretty much everything that makes our world work, impacting millions of households and businesses.

I’m serious about this.?

If you don’t believe me, go and ask your local geo-physicist, or your nearest magnetohydrodynamicist.

Then spare a thought for the animals.? If Earth’s magnetic polarity suddenly changes, countless Canada Geese, Sooty Shearwaters or other migratory birds, who rely on the magnetic field remaining more or less constant, will have their summer holidays completely ruined.? A really bad-feather day in ornithological parlance.

I mean think about it, there you are, a perfectly well-adjusted Lesser Spotted Dotterel, happily on your way to Vladivostok for the summer, when bang, the earth’s polarity reverses and you touchdown in Tahiti simply because you didn’t understand the physics.??

Ponder the fate of the schools of South Island salmon, which will end up in Yokohama Bay and a sushi restaurant in Tokyo; rather than the Rangitata River and a dinner table in Timaru, all because the tiny magnetised bits in the bone behind their brains that normally would have led them back to the streams in which they were hatched, get them totally confused and disoriented.? So much so that they swim to the wrong end of the world.

If that’s what happens to the animals don’t even think about what it will do to mankind’s navigation systems.?

Just be thankful that most aircraft routes are based on a network of radio locator beacons, rather than compass positions, Otherwise Flight 402 to Hawaii might end up in Botswana.?

All maps, nautical charts and geographic references will be redundant; the ‘down-under’ novelty map, which shows the Southern Hemisphere at the top, will become the world’s official Mercator standard.??

No one knows why the polarity reversal happens, but it’s got something to do with movement in the layer of molten magma surrounding the more solid iron core at the earth’s centre.?

The runny bit in between the crust and the core spins at a different rate and apparently acts like a dynamo, setting up electro-magnetic currents.? Instabilities in its gyration are thought to cause the random, reversal phenomenon.

When the next flip will occur no one can predict, but the notion of its imminence provides all the ingredients necessary for a wave of disaster phobia. A wave which will, by comparison, make the hysteria surrounding Y2K look like a pale pixel on the computer screen of life.

The fact is there ain’t nuthin’ we can do about it, even if we knew what its effects would be.?

I read somewhere that if you are 10 years ahead of the market you’re a philosopher, if you’re 2 years ahead you’re a prophet and if you’re 2 months ahead you’re a millionaire.???

I’ll leave you to make up your own minds on the issue.?

But keep a compass handy and if you notice it spinning wildly, or if you see a Sooty Shearwater flying backwards, grab a candle.