… how f’ed exactly are we?
Well, if the Poles switch, we will just have to nuke them back to the Stalin age.
No magnetic field? We would have to live underground for generations, becoming mole-men, until the field reestablishes itself and begins to protect Earth from solar radiation again. For those who look like they were genetically engineered for high-speed burrowing, it would be a good thing, as others would finally want to mate with them.
The Earth’s magnitic field reverses every 200,00 years, but we haven’t had one for about 700,00 years, so we are overdue, and the magnetic field has been decresing, so maybe we are in thr process of having one, maybe not…
During the flipping (which takes a few hundred years) the magnetic field will be all over the place, compasses will useless, but we can see the borialis anywhere on Earth. There will be an big increase in cancers from the solar rays, but not that much compared to the rate of cancer anyway.
The Earth has had several pole reversals while there was life with no serious effects on the population, but never had one when there was humans yets…
Is that all? I thought it’d be worse. The magnetic field stops quite a bit of the radiation and charged particles.
Oh, don’t forget all those disoriented pigeons. Any birds that navigate with an internal compass are going to be f*cked.
Is that all? I thought it’d be worse. The magnetic field stops quite a bit of the radiation and charged particles.[/quote]So does the atmophere, it will be bad, but not the end of the world. Doesn’t the magnetic field just deflect them to the poles where not so many people live, and if they did, they don’t get fried. Not sure though.
[quote]Oh, don’t forget all those disoriented pigeons. Any birds that navigate with an internal compass are going to be f*cked.[/quote]Indeed, and lots of other animals that use the magnetic field.
I have a question: WHAT TIME IS IT ON THE NORTH/SOUTH POLE?
We all know that the time zones goes from the north pole to south pole. So what time is it if you sit on the nort pole? It’s cold, I know, but what time?
No defined time, so you don’t excist? 
Some people won’t be able to function without their magnetic personality.
One thing I don’t get is how can the process of reversal take between a hundred and a thousand years (see my quotation above)?
That implies that it’s going to slowly rotate through 180 degrees, so for a while we’re going to have east-west polarity (well, north and south on opposite points of the current equator).
Can someone clever explain?
[quote=“Spack”]One thing I don’t get is how can the process of reversal take between a hundred and a thousand years (see my quotation above)?
That implies that it’s going to slowly rotate through 180 degrees, so for a while we’re going to have east-west polarity (well, north and south on opposite points of the current equator).
Can someone clever explain?[/quote]For those hundred years, it’s going to be in complete flux, will point north, then south, then nowhere, then every direction all at once (multiple poles) maybe all in the same day, until the spinning core settles down into a new rythym.
Acid wrote:
Drinking time!! 
I don’t think there is a fixed standard, but GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is probably the most commonly used time. However, New Zealanders in Antarctica use NZ time; perhaps other nationalities do this too as it is easier.
Magnetic strip on your credit/ATM card will stop working.
[quote=“Acid”]I have a question: WHAT TIME IS IT ON THE NORTH/SOUTH POLE?
We all know that the time zones goes from the north pole to south pole. So what time is it if you sit on the nort pole? It’s cold, I know, but what time?
No defined time, so you don’t excist? [/quote]
Good question. Never thought about that before. It’s like the German philosopher, Wittgenstein, I think, who once asked: “If it’s five o’clock pm in Berlin, then what time is it on the moon?”
I suppose at the Poles they would calibrate according to the daylight and sunrise and sunset, etc. There is a great website somewhere run by scientists and technicians who live in Antarctica year round. Maybe that will tell us the time there. GOOGLE for it.
Depends on which way you’re facing 
[quote=“lane119”]I suppose at the Poles they would calibrate according to the daylight and sunrise and sunset, etc.[/quote]If you assume that noon is when the sun is highest, and midnight is when the sun is lowest, albeit far below the horizon, then noon would be in March, and midnight is in October. Because the sun stays at the same height all day, just circles around.
If you think about it, if you stand on the North pole, you don’t actually move as the earth rotates, you just face a different direction. But the Earth orbitting the sun would make the sun rise and fall once a year.
If you’re talking about the time at the magnetic north pole, then it’s in the Artic ocean just off Canada, heading towards Alaska and Russia at about 15km per year. Even then it wobbles about 80km each day.