did you know that Earth has two North
Pole's
there's the geographic North Pole which
never changes and there's the magnetic
north pole which is always on the move
and right now it's moving faster than
usual over the last 150 years the
magnetic north pole has casually
wandered 685 miles across northern
Canada but right now it's racing 25
miles a year to the northwest this could
be a sign that we're about to experience
something humans have never witnessed
before a magnetic polar flip and when
this happens it could affect much more
than just your compass right now in the
surface of the planet it looks like it's
just a bar magnet right our compasses
are just are just you know pointing
towards one pole at a time because
there's a dominant to cold dipole system
but sometimes Earth doesn't always just
have a single magnetic north and south
pole evidence suggests that for hundreds
to thousands of years at a time our
planet has had four six and even eight
poles at a time this is what has
happened when the magnetic poles flipped
in the past and when it happens again it
won't be good news for humans now you
might think that eight poles must be
better than two but the reality is that
multiple magnetic fields would fight
each other
this could weaken Earth's protective
magnetic field by up to 90 percent
during a polar flip Earth's magnetic
field is what shields us from harmful
space radiation which can damage cells
and cause cancer and fry electronic
circuits and electrical grids with a
weaker field in place some scientists
think this could expose planes to higher
levels of radiation making flights less
safe this could also disrupt the
internal compass in many animals which
use the magnetic field for navigation
even more extreme it could make certain
places on the planet too dangerous to
live but what exactly will take place on
the surface is less clear than what will
undoubtedly happen in space satellites
and crude space missions will need extra
shielding that will have to provide
ourselves without it intense cosmic and
solar radiation will fry circuit boards
and increase the risk of cancer and
astronauts our modern way of life cease
to exist we know this because we're
already seeing a glimpse of this in an
area called the South Atlantic anomaly
turns out the direction of a portion of
the magnetic field deep beneath this
area has already flipped scientists say
that's one reason why the field has been
steadily weakening since 1840 as a
result the Hubble Space Telescope and
other satellites often shut down their
sensitive electronics as they pass over
the area and astronauts on the
International Space Station report
seeing a higher number of bright flashes
of light in their vision thought to be
caused by high-energy cosmic rays that
the weaker field can't hold back since
experts started measuring the anomaly a
few decades ago it has grown in size and
now covers a fifth of Earth's surface
with no signs of shrinking anytime soon
this is so extreme that it could be a
sign we're on the brink of a Polar flip
or we may already be in the midst of one
but scientists remain skeptical mainly
because the last thing the cold burst
was 780 thousand years ago so it's not
we don't have an erection it turns out
seven hundred eighty thousand years is
over double the time that Earth usually
takes between flips since the last mass
extinction there have been there been
reversals roughly every three hundred
thousand Wars so what gives well
scientists haven't figured it out yet
it's unnerving to think that our modern
way of life banking a stock exchange
missile tracking GPS relies on the
outcome of something we can neither
predict nor control one study went so
far as to estimate that a single giant
solar storm today
could cost the u.s. up to 40 1.5 billion
dollars a day in damages and that's what
the Earth's magnetic field at its
current strength it's frightening to
even imagine the devastation a storm
would bring to an earth with a magnetic
field only 10% as strong as it is now we
may not be able to stop a polar flip but
we can at least start to take measures
to minimize the damage the first step
figure out what's going on with this
wacky field on the hunt or the European
Space Agency's swarm satellites that are
currently collecting the most precise
data on the strength of Earth's magnetic
field right now they could be our
greatest hope for solving this riddle
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