Imagine waking up and finding out the world was upside down maybe you live in New York
City you get in your car and drive north towards Florida you turn around and start driving south
towards Boston what in the name of Einstein's ghost is going on here in reality the world
isn't really upside down the poles have just reversed their magnetic charge but when this
does happen you may not be alive long enough to drive anywhere welcome back to Factnomenal today
we're exploring what will happen when the Earth's poles flip and it is a matter of when... not if
let's start in earth's core the source of the magnetic field that wraps our planet and protects
us from lethal solar and cosmic radiation the inner core is a solid mass of crystallized liquid
metal that in time managed to cool off and change from a liquid to a solid however the pressure at
the center of the earth is so high more than 3.5 million times the pressure of the atmosphere at
sea level and so hot at temperatures that rival those of the sun that experiments reproducing
how the core could have cooled under such intense pressure and heat have varied
a lot estimates of when the inner core formed range from 500 million years ago to 4 billion
years ago a massive margin of error knowing when earth's inner core began cooling off matters a lot
because the dynamics between earth's inner core and outer core create what's known as a geodynamo
an earth generator this earth generator is responsible for the magnetic field we know today
contrary to popular belief the inner core is so hot that the iron there is actually demagnetized
it's the interaction between the roiling molten metal of the outer core and the solid state of
the inner that seems to drive the magnetic field around the earth and depending on when the inner
core began cooling off our understanding of how this generator functions can change dramatically
fluctuations of heat and density deep in the core essentially run the generator so figuring
out the geochemistry of how it all began would be like solving the mystery of how life began
earth's geodynamo is an incredible source of self-sustaining energy
forged out of a goldilocks set of circumstances that few other planets exhibit these circumstances
involve a combination of rotational speed and temperature too little rotation like on Venus
where one day takes the equivalent of 116 earth days and no magnetic field is generated too much
like what may have happened on mars and the whole thing could fizzle out and die
another perplexing mystery about earth's core is this part of it may be made from another planet
4.5 billion years ago our planet collided with another celestial body Theia during the creation
of the solar system earth and Theia smashed together with such force that two things happened
almost simultaneously one chunk from the impact shot out and created our moon and two chunks
of Theia each a million times larger than mount Everest plunged deep down into earth's outer core
Theia's embedded ghosts may be the cause of all the magnetic anomalies we're experiencing now
blockades that are affecting the continuity of earth's magnetic fields we've all seen the moon
but it turns out that these pieces lodged in the core of our planet may be creating catastrophe
it's hard to predict an effect if you don't fully understand the cause and this is exactly what's
going on right now with earth's poles earth may be experiencing the beginning stages of
a magnetic reversal where the north and south poles flip places but we're not quite sure why
we do know that there is a battle raging beneath our feet earth's dipole that nice orderly system
of north and south poles that resembles a bar magnet is under attack from within swirling
clusters of molten iron and nickel seem to be growing stronger in certain areas of the earth's
outer crust and draining energy from the poles as a result the north pole has been wandering towards
Siberia at a rate of 55 kilometers per year in the south something called the South Atlantic Anomaly
is behaving in a similar way this part of the magnetic field that stretches from the
southern tip of Africa to south America is gradually weakening and expanding like a
blob across the southern hemisphere though at a slower rate than its northern counterpart
this area of weak magnetism is wreaking havoc with spacecraft a weaker magnetic field means
higher doses of radiation and many satellites moving through the anomaly in low earth orbit
have experienced technical failures as high radiation fries their electrical systems
even more concerning is that the South Pacific Anomaly looks like it's about to split into two
blobs over just the past five years an area of weakening in the east has been accumulating and
it looks like it's on the verge of separating if it does the magnetic field will become even more
erratic if these trends continue we may well be in for a full-blown flipping of the polls
a catastrophe the scale of which humanity has never experienced before or maybe we have
it won't be the first time this has happened by radiocarbon dating magnetized volcanic rocks
scientists have discovered that the poles have switched an astonishing 171 times in
the past 71 million years throughout earth's 4.5 billion year history scientists estimate the pole
shift on average every 300,000 years or so the last permanent pole shift was 780,000 years ago
so based on the math it seems like we're due for a flip but by analyzing fossilized
tree rings scientists think that earth may have experienced the pole shift much more recently
recently enough that modern homo sapiens were around to experience it just 42,000 years ago
a blip in earth's history the earth's pole swapped places but just temporarily
the last champ event as it's been named lasted for one thousand years for reasons unknown the
poles flipped then 1 000 years later they flipped back to where they are now the devastation left
the earth a tattered mess studying the fossil record to figure out what happened back then
might give us an ominous idea of what the future may bring during the last champ event earth's
magnetic field nearly disappeared completely weakening to just six percent of what it is today
this allowed damaging cosmic radiation ultraviolet light and solar flares to enter the atmosphere
which created extreme weather conditions like lightning storms and super high temperatures
the event has been linked to mass extinctions across the globe around the same time as the
pole flip entire species of large mammals across Australia and Tasmania disappeared in Europe our
cousins the neanderthals died out our homo sapien ancestors managed to survive but it's uncertain
just how close we came to the same grizzly fade as the neanderthals or the giant mammals in Australia
the weak magnetic field in the South Atlantic Anomaly is already disrupting satellites
when the poles do flip it will likely create chaos with the world's electrical grid
without satellites we can control electrical grids which means blackouts that could last for decades
all of the tech we rely on now would be rendered effectively useless
no smartphones no GPS systems military tech and sensitive cyber security would be compromised
no internet the two trillion dollar cryptocurrency market poof gone the scope of the technological
disruption is hard to fathom and it would have wide ranging geopolitical and social implications
society would be thrown into chaos wars could erupt as defense systems fail
the fall of data could very well mean the fall of civilization as we know it
yet we will probably survive the nature of the pole flip means that some areas will be worse hit
than others cosmic radiation and solar flares won't blast the entire planet they could kill
everyone in London or they could hit some remote part of the pacific or Siberia we just don't know
scientists have figured out that nearly all plants and animals on earth respond to the magnetic field
in some way kind of like a magnetic sixth sense the phenomenon is called magnetoreception if the
poles flip the magnetic field will disappear for hundreds perhaps thousands of years
before it builds back up again when this happens animal migration roots will be severely disrupted
many species of whales fish turtles and birds rely on the earth's magnetism to help them navigate and
figure out where to go to lay their eggs or mate or fine food even the most basic organisms respond
to magnetism in 1970 a scientist named Richard Blakemore found that single-celled organisms in
the mud of a pond were moving in an organized direction in response to the magnetic field
scientists later discovered that this was because the cells contained tiny bars of
magnetized iron oxide that interacted with earth's magnetic field we've only just begun
scratching the surface of how magnetoreception actually works but if the poles do flip soon
and the magnetic field goes away our already fragile ecosystem will be thrown into disarray
the domino effect this will create is hard to predict but it certainly won't be very good
the earth's magnetic field is essential for life on our planet we've hit you with some pretty heavy
stuff so far but it's important to know just how our magnetic world protector works you can
think of the earth as a kind of massive bar magnet like the ones you've probably experimented with in
grade school science class the magnet is dipolar meaning there are two poles with a positive charge
on one end and a negative charge on the other so let's take our fastest runner in the class all
right and let's have this particle moving by all right let's let our fastest runner on the class
catch up to the to the particle when you catch up to the particle and you're moving at exactly
the same speed as it you measure zero relative velocity and you measure zero magnetic field
so if you're moving fast enough relative to these particles you can get yourself into a frame of
reference where you don't even detect the magnetic field magnetism is everywhere tiny magnetic fields
are created when electrons spin around inside atoms but in most objects the electrons just spin
randomly and their magnetic forces cancel each other out in a bar magnet molecules are arranged
so that the electrons all spin in the same direction which creates the magnetic field that
lets you stick a photo to your refrigerator inside the earth swirling currents of superheated molten
iron and nickel in the outer core guide electrons along a path these currents are hundreds of miles
wide flowing thousands of miles an hour through the 1400 mile deep outer core all riled up by the
speed of earth's rotation these mammoth currents create a closed continuous loop where electrons
flow into the earth at its magnetic north and out at its magnetic south in much the same way as a
bar magnet simple right except based on everything we've mentioned earlier it's a whole lot messier
the short answer to should we be worried is yes but there are lots of things we can do
to prepare for the inevitable polar flip it is possible to design satellites capable of
withstanding the extreme radiation that would come with a reversal of earth's magnetic field
governments businesses and communities can come together to create action plans and figure out
how to store data and manage resources so that when the flip does happen we'll be prepared the
question is though are we capable of collaborating on a global scale to prevent something that will
have a global effect unfortunately the answer to that is probably not maybe the best we can
hope for is that local pockets of magnetically aware geophysicists figure out how to preserve
the best of human culture and we can rebuild as best we can in the aftermath whenever that may be