I just thought of something, it's a fact that the Magnetic North Pole is in constant motion, right? Well, its my understanding that two opposing "magnets"(ie. north & south poles) suspended in the ether, would naturally align. Now, that being said, couldn't it be possible that the crust of the earth , which "floats" on a lake of magma is being spun, and in turn, is responsible for the warming and melting of the polar caps, i remember reading that the arctic had once been tropical.

And on an other note, perhaps the mayans knew this, or some varient?

What do you think?

The actual physical poles aren't spinning. The magnetic polarity is just reversing.

Besides, global warming has produced a rise in temps nearly everywhere.

-deus-

the poles are just wandering. they do so, reversal of the poles isn't totally understood. it hasn't happened for hundreds of thousands of years, so to assume a constant rate of movement wouldn't be correct.

The actual physical poles aren't spinning. The magnetic polarity is just reversing.

Besides, global warming has produced a rise in temps nearly everywhere.

-deus-

Ok, so the magnetic polarity is reversing, how is this occuring? I know in electro magnetics, to accomplish this, one needs to alternate the flow of electricity. Any ideas or theoories on how this would occur naturally?

And I wasn't exactly trying to say that the poles were spinning, but that the magnetic poles of the earth and the sun, parallely? are locked in tandem, and that it's the earth's crust, that is spinning. Therefore heating and melting the ice caps, which in turn, removes the earth's natural cool down mechanism, resulting in the heating of the planet as a whole.

And if the earth's magnetic polarity does actually alternate, would it be prudent to assume that this occurs pretty much regularly. I've read multiple times about mass extinctions occuring quite regularly, every 120m years or so? Something tells me that comet strikes and volcanic eruptions would not occur and evenly spaced intervals, so there must be another explanation.

There was a thing about this on Nova not long ago.

Aparently what happens is the convection currents of the outer core generate an electromagnetic field, which magnitizes the inner core, and the spinning causes an electrical field in the outer core. It's the motion that adds the energy lost in this system. No one has any fucking idea how this came about in the first place.

Magnetic north and south swap out every now and again. Naval records over the past 300 years show that the poles are wandering more and more. We could see a failure of the geomagnetic field in under 50 years. The magnetic field in the south Atlantic is actually exhibiting a strong north field right now, causing an overall drop in the local geomagnetic field of 30%.

And I mean failure. It doesn't just switch over a few years, or even a few hundred years. Should take about 2000 years to flip completely. In the mean time, the geomagnetic field in general will drop to under 10% of current, and we may see as many as 4-8 north poles at the same time. Radiation will kill about 100,000 people per year through cancer. It's not that bad really, considering that that's how about 1/3 of us are going to go out anyway.

On the plus side, you'll be able to see the aurora anywhere on earth.

That was a very informative answer, wow, it makes me wonder if maybe that was something the mayans knew. I find it very possible that apst civilization would be more advanced in at least one field, to think we are the most knowledgable species ever is to be downright ignorant.

Do you remember the name of that show on Nova? by chance, I'd really like to see that.

I'll try to track it down.

I forgot to add this. According to magnetic fields imprinted on lava flows, we know that at the height of the shifting poles, magnetic north can travel up to 30° per day.

Edit:

I did track down which nova episode it was. It was called Magnetic Storm, and originaly aired November 18, 2003. I also found a link on the nova website to a page about that episode. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/

Enjoy.

thx, i will