Tuesday, December 1, 2020

When Will the Earth Experience a Pole a Reversal

 The answer is that the Earth will experience a pole reversal, given enough time. This of course presupposes that the laws of physics and thermodynamics hold true on this planet for all future times.

From that assumption, the Earth will experience a pole reversal when it has reached a stable equilibrium state. To reach such a point of equilibrium, there must be no external forces on the planet which move it from its current location. In other words, if the earth were to be static in space and time (e.g., not rotating or orbiting), then it would eventually settle into an equilibrium state with respect to its rotational axis and magnetic field.

The planet would then have reached a state of equilibrium. For a pole reversal to occur, there must be some external force acting on the Earth which perturbs it from its current equilibrium. Such an external force could be magnetic or gravitational.

The Earth's magnetic field is currently decreasing in strength at a rate of about 3% per century. This decrease makes the Earth susceptible to external forces which cause perturbations from its current equilibrium state (i.e., the current magnetic north pole and south pole).

Such perturbations could come from the solar wind, which can cause a magnetic field to flip or reverse. In the Earth's case, this would in essence turn the north pole into a south pole and vice versa.

The solar wind is a plasma consisting of electrons and protons. The Earth's magnetic field deflects the majority of these particles, but some make it through the permeability barrier. The weaker the magnetic field, however, less of these particles are deflected


If you are asking how long till the pole reversal, then that is a difficult question. The answer to it depends on what time frame you mean. The Earth's magnetic field is decaying at an exponential rate and will take something like 10000 years until half the strength of its current state has been lost.

The Earth's magnetic field has been measured in the paleomagnetic record (geological strata) for hundreds of millions of years. The last pole reversal was about 780,000 years ago and there have been 7 or 8 reversals in the past 20 million years. If you divide this by 6, which is the average number of reversals per million year interval since then, you get 13800 as an estimate for how many years until another reversal.

However, I should note that the field is decaying exponentially and that we are now in a period of rapid decay. It might be more accurate to calculate how long until it reaches 10% of its strength at present (370 years), or even 1% (7.4 years). The pole reversal could happen any time during this period.

One can also look at the history of ice ages and see that if you take the average time between them, a period of 100 thousand years has elapsed since the last one. That would put us about 40 thousand years from another glaciation.


The pole reversal was predicted by Gauss to occur about 5300 years ago, when the Earth's magnetic field reversed its polarity. It is estimated that the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field occurs every 500 000-1 000 000 years with a regular periodicity.

Gauss' prediction is based on the assumption that the Earth's core behaves as a giant bar magnet. The magnetic poles are located at the geometrical centers of opposite magnetic fields generated by moving electrons in the liquid metal of the planet's outer core, which rotate around its axis once every 24 hours.

However, the Earth's core is not a perfect bar magnet and its magnetic field does not have a uniform polarity but consists of 'north' and 'south' magnetic regions with opposite polarities. In addition to this, there are several thousand tons of molten iron comprised in it that move inside the planet.

This leads to a very complicated magnetic field's dynamics with various temporal and spatial variations, making it impossible for the pole reversal to take place at a certain time. If we assume that the Earth's core behaves like an ideal bar magnet, which is ruled out by modern theories of geodynamo theory, then Gauss' prediction will be realized in about 5300 years from now. However, this calculation is not possible without taking into account all factors influencing the planet's behavior.

As I see, the pole reversal will not occur in 5300 years from now. However, there is a very high probability of this event happening within 50 years.

If the pole reversal takes place within 50 years, it will cause a very strong perturbation of the Earth's magnetic field. Such an event is considered to be extremely dangerous for human civilization.

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