Earth's Magnetic Field

This article is a nice summary of the present state of our ideas about the Earth’s interior and its magnetic engine. To be totally fair, it is complete rubbish to think in terms of swirling dynamos. The core is packed and any motion must be glacial at best. Electron flow is quite a different matter. But even that requires a meaningful potential. And we already know that the mere movement of the magnetic field itself rules out the core acting like a permanent magnet.

An actual review of the global map of magnetic strength reveals a non homogenous field that still preserves the polar orientation. Sort of.

I have come to the conclusion that there exists a thin layer of (liquid) carbon between the crustal material which is disassociating and drawing contained graphitic carbon down with it before hitting the carbon melt point and then rising. The carbon must go deepest to reach a possible melt point. Or perhaps it is all graphite. The point to remember is that all other elements are dissociated there and in liquid state.

This explains how a charge of liquid carbon is able to spear its way through the crust and even reaches the surface at around seventy miles per hour. That is also fast enough to leave a little of the carbon to remain in crystal form. The rest will be consumed by the crustal material itself. Recall the known low viscosity of graphite.

This layer may only be a hundred feet thick if the average size of a kimberlite pipe is an indicator. It is certainly everywhere and about eighty miles deep. It is the slip plane between the crust and the core itself and the reason why any crustal movement is even possible at all.

The mere existence of kimberlite pipes and diamonds is proof of the existence of this layer of pure liquid carbon.

It is also a great place for storing electrons and a natural generator of a strong magnetic field that can shift and move in reaction to modest electrical or even mechanical stimulation. It likely insulates the core itself from expressing magnetic activity.

Earth's Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast, Study Says

Kimberly Johnson

for National Geographic News June 30, 2008 Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth's liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet's surface, a new study says.

"What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth's magnetic field," said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said.

The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth's solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet's magnetic field.

The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, modeled Earth's magnetic field using nine years of highly accurate satellite data.

Flip-Flop

Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred in several far-flung regions of Earth, the researchers found.

In 2003 scientists found pronounced changes in the magnetic field in the Australasian region. In 2004, however, the changes were focused on Southern Africa.

The changes "may suggest the possibility of an upcoming reversal of the geomagnetic field," said study co-author Mioara Mandea, a scientist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

Earth's magnetic field has reversed hundreds of times over the past billion years and the process could take thousands of years to complete.

(Related story: "Magnetic Field Weakening in Stages, Old Ships' Logs Suggest" [May 11, 2006])

Upper Atmosphere Radiation

The decline in the magnetic field also is opening Earth's upper atmosphere to intense charged particle radiation, scientists say.

Satellite data show the geomagnetic field decreasing in the South Atlantic region, Mandea said, adding that an oval-shaped area east of Brazil is significantly weaker than similar latitudes in other parts of the world.

"It is in this region that the shielding effect of the magnetic field is severely reduced, thus allowing high energy particles of the hard radiation belt to penetrate deep into the upper atmosphere to altitudes below a hundred kilometers (62 miles)," Mandea said.

This radiation does not influence temperatures on Earth. The particles, however, do affect technical and radio equipment and can damage electronic equipment on satellites and airplanes, Olsen of the Danish space center said.

Keep Watching

The study documents just how rapidly the flow in Earth's core is changing, said Peter Olson, a geophysics professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who was not involved with the research.

By using satellite imagery, researchers have a nearly continuous measurement of changes, he said.

"They provide a good rationale to continue this monitoring longer," Olson said.

Crustal Drift

With my last two posts on the Pleistocene Nonconformity we have built up a much clearer picture or event hypothesis. It also largely removes the single most important problem with a crustal shift. How is it accomplished without completely sterilizing Earth in the process? In my article I showed one way that I thought was feasible. I still thought that it would be far too shaky to be easily survivable.

What we now have is an ordinary meteor with enough mass and velocity to strike the polar region with enough energy to initiate crustal movement in a world that was already unstable due to ice accumulation at both poles over a million years. Once moving, however slowly, it repositioned itself in such a manner as to rebalance the crust. A major tangential impact anywhere in the polar region would have served.

The meteor may even have been a comet not unlike the one that whacked Jupiter, but certainly much smaller. The bulk of the mass may even have been frozen liquids leaving little evidence except the already recognized dust evidence of iridium. This supported by the explosive arrival.

Slamming into the Ice sheet and exploding is an energy event that would scour the Northern Hemisphere leaving perhaps small blast shadows where survival was possible. The ice was a mile thick almost everywhere so penetration was very unlikely even of the ice for a low density object. The point that must be made is that the dynamic effect of an impact is going to be hugely abated without necessarily lessening the imparted vector to the crust itself. I think that it will turn out to be an unexpectedly neat solution to the problem of imparting thrust to the crust at the pole requiring vastly less energy than previous calculations showed.

Those that have read my article know that it is only necessary to jar the crust into motion. Recall that the crust is already moving freely to accommodate the continental drift of plates against each other. It is not sticky down there at the interface.

What I have been sharing with you is a radical new rethink of the crustal shift hypothesis espoused by Einstein and a few others back sixty years ago. They could not resolve the two key problems the idea faced. One was the problem of slipperiness which I address in my article and is empirically resolved with continental drift. The second was who pushed and where? We now are building the library of evidence for this event.

I invite everyone to keep an ear to the ground to pick up additional supporting evidence. Let your imagination work a bit. Locate Pleistocene strata anywhere and ask if there is a charcoal layer. There are never enough eyeballs and a river bank with a history of mastodon bones is a great start. Let us know. The entirety of the USA is very prospective.

Of course this all fleshes out the events that most likely are reflected in the Bronze Age tales of the great global flood. The idea of weeks of rain resulting from the initial impact is a natural consequence of the now observed heat event which dissipated over the seas boiling off huge amounts of water vapor. It would not easily be forgotten. The rise of the sea level over at least a thousand years and probably a lot longer for the most northerly remnants would have been unmistakable and again easily remembered in lore. The surprise is that these memories were successfully transmitted for ten thousand years.

The great importance of this hypothesis to the present day is that it puts to rest the idea that we can slide once again into a new ice age. Our current crustal configuration is very robust and is preventing a polar ice cap forming. We are good to go for the next million years or so. In fact, we are close to reinstating Bronze Age conditions in the Arctic. That would actually be nice.