WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Magnetic Pole Switcheroo

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<v Speaker 1>Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. The whole gang's here,

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<v Speaker 1>even in spirit. So let's go stuff you should know.

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<v Speaker 2>Uh yeah, you put this one together. This is a

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<v Speaker 2>good one.

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<v Speaker 3>We're talking about the magnetic field, and specifically the switching

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<v Speaker 3>of Earth's magnetic pole, and I guess we should just

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<v Speaker 3>start talking about what the magnetic field of the Earth is, right, Yeah.

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<v Speaker 1>You kind of can't really get past that one, because

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<v Speaker 1>apparently it seems to be fairly peculiar to Earth to

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<v Speaker 1>have a really solid inner core made if I think

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<v Speaker 1>iron and nickel, and that that is basically bathed in

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<v Speaker 1>a bath of molten outer core. And because that molten

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<v Speaker 1>outer core is constantly roiling and convecting and doing all

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<v Speaker 1>sorts of crazy motions, it actually produces a dynamo effect

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<v Speaker 1>where a magnetic field is generated. That inner core essentially

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<v Speaker 1>becomes a giant bar magnet with a north pole and

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<v Speaker 1>south pole. Yeah, and that magnetic field radiates from the

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<v Speaker 1>center of the Earth outward into outer space, and it

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<v Speaker 1>does some pretty cool stuff. One, it prevents high energy

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<v Speaker 1>particles that are bombarding Earth at all time from reaching

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<v Speaker 1>Earth generally and killing us, just shooting right through your throat.

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<v Speaker 1>And out the other side, so life can exist on

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<v Speaker 1>Earth and then less importantly but more beautifully also creates

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<v Speaker 1>the auroras.

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<v Speaker 3>And also why I wear a kevlar turtleneck actually not

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<v Speaker 3>a dicky really because.

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<v Speaker 2>It gets warm in the summer.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's smart.

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<v Speaker 2>So you've got that bipolar core.

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<v Speaker 3>You know, we have the North pole in the South

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<v Speaker 3>pole geographically, like, we know where those are.

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<v Speaker 2>We've mapped those out.

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<v Speaker 3>They're great, everyone loves them, but they really have nothing

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<v Speaker 3>to do with the actual magnetic poles of the Earth.

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<v Speaker 3>Two different things. The Earth's poles, as we will see,

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<v Speaker 3>they move around a lot because of that molten core

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<v Speaker 3>is unstable and it moves. That that roiling sort of

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<v Speaker 3>molten gunky we're talking about is weaker in some places,

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<v Speaker 3>it's stronger in some places. And you know, you kind

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<v Speaker 3>of likened it to a pot of water like bubbling

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<v Speaker 3>and the bubbles like pop and fade away. The same

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<v Speaker 3>thing is going on there that creates instability and sort

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<v Speaker 3>of just movement.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So that's suffice to say that the Earth's magnetic

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<v Speaker 1>field is not constantly stable. It's constantly changing. And since

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<v Speaker 1>some spots are weaker than other spots, that means the

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<v Speaker 1>poles can actually move around, and they do. They wander about.

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<v Speaker 1>It's called excursions, and they can move all over the place.

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<v Speaker 1>And as a matter of fact, when they what seems

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<v Speaker 1>to pass what seems to be a threshold, they flip

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<v Speaker 1>and all of a sudden, the South Pole is that

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<v Speaker 1>the geographical nor Pole area and the North Pole is

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<v Speaker 1>down in Antarctica somewhere. And it happens. And we've just

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<v Speaker 1>recently learned about this kind of thing.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's called polarity reversal.

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<v Speaker 3>There's some disagreement among the scientific community about how often

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<v Speaker 3>this happens, how quickly it happens. There was a study

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<v Speaker 3>in twenty twenty from the Scripts Oceanographic Institute in San Diego,

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<v Speaker 3>San Diego, Right, Yeah, he said, sd I didn't think

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<v Speaker 3>it was South Dakota.

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<v Speaker 2>Definitely, or southern Durham, North Carolina.

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<v Speaker 1>It could have been that one. It's definitely not South

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<v Speaker 1>Dakota though, I'll tell you that.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

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<v Speaker 3>So they had a new model based on one hundred

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<v Speaker 3>thousand years worth of data and they said, actually, these

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<v Speaker 3>poles are wandering like a lot. It's a real walk about.

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<v Speaker 3>They're wandering about ten degrees a year. That is equal

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<v Speaker 3>to the distance between Atlanta and Toronto. For Aussie friends,

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<v Speaker 3>brisbe in Melbourne or if you're in London. Those are

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<v Speaker 3>the three places that listen to us basically, sure Canada,

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<v Speaker 3>Australia in the UK, or London and Prague. And that

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<v Speaker 3>is about ten times what scientists thought before the study

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<v Speaker 3>came out.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the pole can wander that far in a year.

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<v Speaker 1>A year. You just like, when you hear about this,

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<v Speaker 1>you're like, Okay, that's that's where I didn't know they

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<v Speaker 1>could move. Maybe it just kind of gyrates a little bit. No,

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<v Speaker 1>it can travel from Toronto to Atlanta in the year

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<v Speaker 1>and back, and it wanders all over the place. It's

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<v Speaker 1>not like it follows like a set line. Because again,

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<v Speaker 1>right the molten inner or outer courts roiling, it looks

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<v Speaker 1>probably a lot like the surface of the sun, and

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<v Speaker 1>so all the little spots in weird like areas and everything.

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<v Speaker 1>That's where the kind of like the magnetic poles actually

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<v Speaker 1>traveled like down a plinko set essentially, but is severear

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<v Speaker 1>plinko set. If you can wrap your mind around that

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<v Speaker 1>kind of.

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<v Speaker 3>Thing, all right, Well I'm gonna wrap my mind around it,

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<v Speaker 3>and we're gonna take a break, and then I'm gonna

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<v Speaker 3>unwrap my mind right after this. All right, so we

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<v Speaker 3>were talking about this thing is it's really holland these

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<v Speaker 3>poles are moving around and they can actually flip.

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<v Speaker 2>And the last time that happened.

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<v Speaker 3>Was about forty two thousand years ago in what's called

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<v Speaker 3>the La Champ I guess the La Champ excursion, great

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<v Speaker 3>man name, and this was the lava flow in France,

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<v Speaker 3>of which it was named after because of the fossil

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<v Speaker 3>record I guess that we discovered in the nineteen sixties.

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<v Speaker 3>And during this excursion, the North Pole went across North America.

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<v Speaker 3>Then said, all right, now I'm gonna drop down into

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<v Speaker 3>the Pacific or through the Pacific to Antarctica, and then

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<v Speaker 3>I'm the North Pole, by the way, and I'm going

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<v Speaker 3>to stay there in Antarctica for about four hundred years,

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<v Speaker 3>and then I'm going to go back up to the

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<v Speaker 3>Indian Ocean to the actual geographical North Pole.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, roughly that area, back to generally where the north

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<v Speaker 1>magnetic north Pole typically is. Right. Yeah, that's really fast.

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<v Speaker 1>Four hundred years on a geological timescale is like a

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<v Speaker 1>blink is too slow as a description or analogy, And

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<v Speaker 1>so the Lashapis excursion seems to have had some pretty

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<v Speaker 1>significant effects on the planet at forty two thousand years ago,

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<v Speaker 1>coincides with a bunch of weird stuff that happened on Earth.

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<v Speaker 1>There was a lot of glaciers that expanded and all

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<v Speaker 1>sorts of surprising places. The wind patterns changed globally, the megafauna,

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<v Speaker 1>a lot of megafauna species disappeared from the fossil records,

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<v Speaker 1>and so too did the Neanderthals. It was a really

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<v Speaker 1>really sick, magnificant period of like surprising and kind of

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<v Speaker 1>dismal activity in Earth's history. And they have traced this

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<v Speaker 1>to basically a weaken in the magnetic field. That is

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<v Speaker 1>probable the magnetic field became very weak and that allowed

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<v Speaker 1>the poles to flip very quickly, and that it wasn't

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<v Speaker 1>necessarily the poles flipping that caused all of this weird

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<v Speaker 1>stuff to happen, but that the magnetic field being weakened

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<v Speaker 1>probably also let this weird stuff happening. So the reversal

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<v Speaker 1>of polarity was a symptom, just like say the disappearance

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<v Speaker 1>of the Neanderthals was, or the change in wind patterns,

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<v Speaker 1>where they were all symptoms of this weakened magnetic field

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<v Speaker 1>around Earth.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you talked about it, you know, sort of acting

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<v Speaker 3>like a force field against that particle bombardment that probably

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<v Speaker 3>weakened it enough that they were bombarded. The ozone layer

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<v Speaker 3>was damaged, a lot of UV light is just baking

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<v Speaker 3>the Earth, and it was just bad, bad enough where

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<v Speaker 3>scientists obviously are like, well, when is this going to

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<v Speaker 3>happen again? Because we're in store for something pretty rough,

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<v Speaker 3>And what they've kind of come out with was a

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<v Speaker 3>we're not sure exactly when it's going to happen again

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<v Speaker 3>because you can't look back. I think you mentioned earlier.

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<v Speaker 3>It doesn't necessarily happen in a pattern that you can

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<v Speaker 3>count on.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it doesn't seem to.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so they can't say like, all right, well here's

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<v Speaker 3>when it's going to happen again, But they do think

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<v Speaker 3>this was a really the La Shamp excursion was sort

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<v Speaker 3>of a rare, fast thing, and if it does happen again,

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<v Speaker 3>it'll probably be over the order of thousands of years,

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<v Speaker 3>and it's not going to be the kind of thing

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<v Speaker 3>like most of the other times it happened. It was

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<v Speaker 3>over a much slower time period. The La Champ was

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<v Speaker 3>just so fast it wrecked everything. And it probably wouldn't

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<v Speaker 3>be that bad if it happened again, because it would

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<v Speaker 3>be on a much slower, you know, thousands and thousands

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<v Speaker 3>of years timeline.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean tens of thousands of years versus hundreds

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<v Speaker 1>of years. That's pretty significant as far as differences go, right,

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<v Speaker 1>And if if it sounds kind of like if it

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<v Speaker 1>rings a bell. We talked a little bit about this

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<v Speaker 1>in the plate tectonics episode, where like the magnetic striping

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<v Speaker 1>at the bottom of the sea is basically lava flows

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<v Speaker 1>recording reversals in polarity of Earth's poles. This is very

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<v Speaker 1>much what we're talking about. So because they think it

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<v Speaker 1>happens over you know, tens of thousands of years, and

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<v Speaker 1>if you look back in the fossil record at other

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<v Speaker 1>times that coincide with polarity reversals, there doesn't seem to

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<v Speaker 1>have been anywhere near the kind of catastrophic events that

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<v Speaker 1>came from the La Shop excursion. They're not particularly worried

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<v Speaker 1>about it, but we do know that if it did

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<v Speaker 1>happen on like a normal slow timescale, we still have

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<v Speaker 1>to adapt because a lot of our technology relies on

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<v Speaker 1>a stable magnetic field.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean they have to take that stuff into account.

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<v Speaker 3>Like when they look at the fossil record, maybe not

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<v Speaker 3>much of anything happened because they weren't using satellites and

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<v Speaker 3>they you know, didn't have things floating around in space.

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<v Speaker 3>But there's an area called the South Atlantic Anomaly between

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<v Speaker 3>South America and South Africa where there is a weaker

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<v Speaker 3>magnetic field than elsewhere on Earth, and when satellites and

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<v Speaker 3>stuff go through there in spacecraft there are issues.

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<v Speaker 1>They're like can you hear me? Are you still there?

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<v Speaker 3>And they say, in space, no one can hear you scream.

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<v Speaker 2>Name that movie.

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<v Speaker 1>Space Balls exactly.

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<v Speaker 3>So that's an example of what can happen with a

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<v Speaker 3>just a somewhat weaker magnetic field. So they would have

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<v Speaker 3>to account for that stuff ahead of time, know it's

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<v Speaker 3>coming and account for it. I think there would be

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<v Speaker 3>some economic impact, but I mean I think who is

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<v Speaker 3>at the Cambridge Center for Risk Studies said that it

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<v Speaker 3>could be like a six to forty two billion dollar

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<v Speaker 3>cost for the United States, which honestly, that's chump change

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<v Speaker 3>when you look at you know, budgets of the United States.

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<v Speaker 1>But that's a day, yeah, a day, So it's.

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<v Speaker 2>Not like uh.

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<v Speaker 3>I mean, that's a lot of money obviously, but it's

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<v Speaker 3>not like that would wreck the American economy anything.

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<v Speaker 1>It depends on how long it went on for you know, well, yeah,

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<v Speaker 1>I guess so. I mean, if they didn't get up

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<v Speaker 1>and running within a few hours, that could be you know.

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<v Speaker 2>It could add up, It could add up.

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<v Speaker 1>Speaking of knowing it's coming, I want to go ahead

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<v Speaker 1>and stem the tide of emails. I know that Chuck

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<v Speaker 1>was talking about alien By the way, everyone.

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<v Speaker 2>Who could Jos baseballs.

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<v Speaker 1>One other thing, Chuck, because the disappearance of the Neanderthals

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<v Speaker 1>coincides with the weakening of the magnetosphere and probably bombardment

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<v Speaker 1>of UV radiation and ions. Yeah, maybe right that the

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<v Speaker 1>Neanderthals really didn't help. You might be onto something. Man,

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<v Speaker 1>that's an old one. You got anything else?

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<v Speaker 2>I got nothing else? JM.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, then short stuff is out. Stuff you should know

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<v Speaker 1>is a pretty action of iHeartRadio.

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