Earth's magnetic field collapsing!

[Shogun Gunner]

I wonder if all the new magnet schools we have been creating is helping at all.

Oh, and I'll stop spraying my aerosol in the air to keep that hole above the south pole in check. I don't want those cute little penguins to get sunburned.

What's black and white and read all over? see paragraph above for clue

[Nubclear]

Edit: Even better:

A communist democrat (But I repeat myself)

[Pekka]

I'm not afraid, if I can reach it, I can punch it.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Pekka
I'm not afraid, if I can reach it, I can punch it.

[Senseless Troll] Yet Karelia is still ours [/Troll]

[Berzerker]

What I'm more curious about is how animals that rely on magnetism as a navigational aid deal with the situation when the magnetic poles begin to wander during a flip. They've mapped many of the reversals by analysing the magnetism of the sea floor spreading out from the Atlantic Rift zone and they seem to occur every ~700,000 years. Unfortunately they can't tell how fast flips occur...

[Dis]

this will screw up all the maps with the N on top.

[Dis]

birds will figure it out. They have before, no reason they wouldn't figure it out this time.

oh how easily humans underestimate the birds.

I love birds, they are cool.

[Dis]

think about it this way. if sun cancer rates rise, this could be good for us nerds who spend all days indoors at a computer.

All the cool kids will die off of skin cancer

[Kramerman]

Then the chicks will be ours!!!!!!!!

[Mr. President]

As a former student of astronomy, I think the only thing you can say with certainty about cosmic scale events is that you can't be certain of anything.

Dissident:

Birds are much smarter than people. They'll be fine.

[alva]

Hmmm,wow,nerd-chicks

[Drake Tungsten]

"crack" isn't as funny as having a dorm building named "babcock" on a street named "bever".

[Shogun Gunner]

@ Drake. Awesome. How do I apply?

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Frozzy
I just saw a program on this today, and though I would add my two cents

Heh. If it was on the Discovery channel then I saw the same programme. But I can claim to have some more knowledge from a few Honours level Physics papers in Geomagnetism.

This change is NEVER instantaneous, unless you count a few hundred - thousand years as immediate. At the current rate we have several tens of thousands of years before there is any real risk of extra cosmic radiation at ground level. And we are 'overdue' by several hundred thousand years (the average time between reversals has been 200,000 years, we have gone 700,000 since the last one) for a reversal in the same way Wellington is 'overdue' for a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.

/me wishes he knew what actually gave rise to the 'secular' variations in magnetic fielde strength...

[:) Smiley]

So is it this decrease in magfield strength that explains the rise in cancer rates, or is that smog really that bad?