"While any magnetic-field flip would still be thousands of years away...". Sneaky sentence right at the end. Sure the last one happened 700,000 years ago, so it is "soon", the but article made it sound like it was happening tomorrow!
One, is the question of "how long" does a flip take? There is some evidence that it can take as few as 100 years[1], the previous consensus estimate (2004) was about 7000 years[2]. That is important because the faster it happens the more havoc it is likely to cause. If it happens over thousands of years then humans will adapt to a 'non constant' compass direction and find other ways to navigate. For example, GPS 'north' which can always point you to 0,0 on the globe.
The second thing is the timing. The pole is currently "racing" towards Siberia[3], so it may have already started flipping. At 30 miles a year it would take 416 years to fully flip. That is well within the 7000 year window and only 4x the 100 year window.
It is one of the more interesting confounding influences on climate change as changes in the magnetic field strength and orientation can change the amount of energy that makes it into the atmosphere from the Sun. That works both ways, either reducing the energy (more charged particles deflected) making it colder or increasing the energy (more charged particles impact the atmosphere) making it warmer.
[1] https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/10/14/earths-magnetic-field-c...
[2] https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100358
[3] https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/ma...
Source: I did my PhD work on the Steens Mountain reversal. It is the Earth's reversal with the most transitional directions recorded in much more reliable volcanic rocks. This was possible because of the huge volume of the Columbia River Basalts that were erupting at that time around 16.7 million years ago. Unfortunately it happened so long ago that direct radioactive dating of its length is impossible with current methods.
Actually the more pressing matter regards animals that employ magnetoreception (birds, bacteria even!) where a change like this might be particularly devastating. This of course assumes that there is not already some undiscovered non-genetic mechanism to help with adjusting, say socially or physiologically. Human technology could adapt in at most a matter of decades, while genetic adaptation would takes orders of magnitude longer.
For those who don't have the time like I didn't
Organite is a substance made of resin metals and quartz that balances and harmonizes Bio-energy (known as orgone). Orgone is analogous to chi or prana and is a type of bio-energy that reverses the effect of entropy[0] It seems to be a mix of crystal healing and EMF grounding (also known as earthing)
It can:
- Neutralizes emf radiation.
- Clears negative energy.
- Aids in meditation.
- Supports restful sleep.
- Enhances lucid dreaming.
- Relieves stress.
- Purifies the living area.
- Can detoxify water.
[0]If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation. - Arthur Eddington
So sure are you, hmmm??
~Nikola Tesla
You should research Wilhelm Reich[1], a student of Freud's who came up with the term "orgone", who fled to the US to escape the Nazis only to have his writings confiscated and burnt by the US government, which imprisoned him until he died.
True? He died a year in to a two year sentence for violating an injunction against him from committing fraud by selling his orgone accumulators.
I think this is underappreciated ethical dilemma, rather like Typhoid Mary. I don't think that Wilhelm Reich thought of himself as a quack, or a fraud - he was more of a kind of technological mystic. While he himself was doubtless earnest, this kind of thing really is memetically dangerous - Scientology, for example, is a deliberate and successful attempt to weaponize it. Even now, people do crazy things like "seed" areas with "orgonite" to dispel "negative energy" - that is, they litter the ground with bits of metal encased with resin. A whole religion of woo, just from a few years of exposure to Reich's ideas.
So what is one to do with someone who is earnestly good-intentioned, highly charismatic, and completely stark-raving mad?
Ignore them as you should any other crackpot, charlatan or fraud. Don't waste your energy, time or money on them except to be entertained.
She also liked Bach flower remedies, and took one in particular for her memory…
She now has severe Alzheimer’s and, conversationally speaking, is no better than a Markov chain with a ~1000 symbol vocabulary.
If we were pretty certain this was going to actually happen, the article would be: The Pole is flipping soon! Here's what you need to know. etc
The modern measurements which underpin this observation have interesting parallels to the Vedic timekeeping of the Upanishads. Barely a (Brahma) day has passed since the beginning of the universe, and orders of magnitude more time must pass before Vishnu will blink for the first time :)