GEOMAGNETICS
by Iona Miller, 2009 - 2013
"The Sun has been a driver of these systems more than we had any right to expect," says Daniel Baker, Principal Investigator, Van Allen Probes Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope (REPT). "We're seeing brand new features we hadn't expected." In a press conference on Dec. 4th members of the Van Allen Probes science team discussed current findings made in unlocking the mysteries of the radiation belts. Energetic events and ejections of plasma from the Sun caused dramatic changes in the radiation belts that, for the first time, were observed by twin spacecraft within the belts.
"We expected to see a fairly placid radiation belt system," Baker reports. "Instead, we see that the belts have been extraordinarily active and dynamic during the first few weeks. We're looking in the right places at the right times." The twin probes, built and managed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., contain identical sets of five instrument suites. These suites have confirmed previous hypotheses about the belts' behavior, while also revealing that the belts are a far more dynamic and changing environment than previously thought.
Our planet's magnetosphere captures charged particles from the billions of tons of plasma ejected by the Sun and from other sources; fields and waves of electricity and magnetism control and guide the charged particles within the belts, with the particles "surfing" on the waves, losing or gaining large amounts of energy along the way as they enter and leave the region.
"We expected to see a fairly placid radiation belt system," Baker reports. "Instead, we see that the belts have been extraordinarily active and dynamic during the first few weeks. We're looking in the right places at the right times." The twin probes, built and managed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., contain identical sets of five instrument suites. These suites have confirmed previous hypotheses about the belts' behavior, while also revealing that the belts are a far more dynamic and changing environment than previously thought.
Our planet's magnetosphere captures charged particles from the billions of tons of plasma ejected by the Sun and from other sources; fields and waves of electricity and magnetism control and guide the charged particles within the belts, with the particles "surfing" on the waves, losing or gaining large amounts of energy along the way as they enter and leave the region.
Changes measured by the Swarm satellite over the past 6 months shows that Earth's magnetic field is changing. Shades of red show areas where it is strengthening, and shades of blue show areas that are weakening. Credit: ESA/DTU
http://www.livescience.com/46694-magnetic-field-weakens.html
Earth's Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now
by Kelly Dickerson | July 08, 2014
Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from huge blasts of deadly solar radiation, has been weakening over the past six months, according to data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite array called Swarm.
The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field — which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) above the planet's surface — have sprung up over the Western Hemisphere, while the field has strengthened over areas like the southern Indian Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the Swarm satellites — three separate satellites floating in tandem.
The scientists who conducted the study are still unsure why the magnetic field is weakening, but one likely reason is that Earth's magnetic poles are getting ready to flip, said Rune Floberghagen, the ESA's Swarm mission manager. In fact, the data suggest magnetic north is moving toward Siberia.
"Such a flip is not instantaneous, but would take many hundred if not a few thousand years," Floberghagen told Live Science. "They have happened many times in the past."[50 Amazing Facts About Planet Earth]
Scientists already know that magnetic north shifts. Once every few hundred thousand years the magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point south instead of north. While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.
Floberghagen hopes that more data from Swarm will shed light on why the field is weakening faster now.
Still, there is no evidence that a weakened magnetic field would result in a doomsday for Earth. During past polarity flips there were no mass extinctions or evidence of radiation damage. Researchers think power grids and communication systems would be most at risk.
Earth's magnetic field acts like a giant invisible bubble that shields the planet from the dangerous cosmic radiation spewing from the sun in the form of solar winds. The field exists because Earth has a giant ball of iron at its core surrounded by an outer layer of molten metal. Changes in the core's temperature and Earth's rotation boil and swirl the liquid metal around in the outer core, creating magnetic field lines.
The movement of the molten metal is why some areas of the magnetic field strengthen while others weaken, Florberghagen said. When the boiling in one area of the outer core slows down, fewer currents of charged particles are released, and the magnetic field over the surface weakens.
"The flow of the liquid outer core almost pulls the magnetic field around with it," Floberghagen said. "So, a field weakening over the American continent would mean that the flow in the outer core below America is slowing down."
The Swarm satellites not only pick up signals coming from the Earth's magnetic field, but also from its core, mantle, crust and oceans. Scientists at the ESA hope to use the data to make navigation systems that rely on the magnetic field, such as aircraft instruments, more accurate, improve earthquake predictions and pinpoint areas below the planet's surface that are rich in natural resources. Scientists think fluctuations in the magnetic field could help identify where continental plates are shifting and help predict earthquakes.
These first results from Swarm were presented at the Third Swarm Science Meeting in Denmark on June 19.
Earth's Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now
by Kelly Dickerson | July 08, 2014
Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from huge blasts of deadly solar radiation, has been weakening over the past six months, according to data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite array called Swarm.
The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field — which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) above the planet's surface — have sprung up over the Western Hemisphere, while the field has strengthened over areas like the southern Indian Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the Swarm satellites — three separate satellites floating in tandem.
The scientists who conducted the study are still unsure why the magnetic field is weakening, but one likely reason is that Earth's magnetic poles are getting ready to flip, said Rune Floberghagen, the ESA's Swarm mission manager. In fact, the data suggest magnetic north is moving toward Siberia.
"Such a flip is not instantaneous, but would take many hundred if not a few thousand years," Floberghagen told Live Science. "They have happened many times in the past."[50 Amazing Facts About Planet Earth]
Scientists already know that magnetic north shifts. Once every few hundred thousand years the magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point south instead of north. While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.
Floberghagen hopes that more data from Swarm will shed light on why the field is weakening faster now.
Still, there is no evidence that a weakened magnetic field would result in a doomsday for Earth. During past polarity flips there were no mass extinctions or evidence of radiation damage. Researchers think power grids and communication systems would be most at risk.
Earth's magnetic field acts like a giant invisible bubble that shields the planet from the dangerous cosmic radiation spewing from the sun in the form of solar winds. The field exists because Earth has a giant ball of iron at its core surrounded by an outer layer of molten metal. Changes in the core's temperature and Earth's rotation boil and swirl the liquid metal around in the outer core, creating magnetic field lines.
The movement of the molten metal is why some areas of the magnetic field strengthen while others weaken, Florberghagen said. When the boiling in one area of the outer core slows down, fewer currents of charged particles are released, and the magnetic field over the surface weakens.
"The flow of the liquid outer core almost pulls the magnetic field around with it," Floberghagen said. "So, a field weakening over the American continent would mean that the flow in the outer core below America is slowing down."
The Swarm satellites not only pick up signals coming from the Earth's magnetic field, but also from its core, mantle, crust and oceans. Scientists at the ESA hope to use the data to make navigation systems that rely on the magnetic field, such as aircraft instruments, more accurate, improve earthquake predictions and pinpoint areas below the planet's surface that are rich in natural resources. Scientists think fluctuations in the magnetic field could help identify where continental plates are shifting and help predict earthquakes.
These first results from Swarm were presented at the Third Swarm Science Meeting in Denmark on June 19.
If you could hear the Earth this is partly what it would sound like. The low frequency sounds are Geomagnetic energy emitting from the ground in Sedona, Arizona. The higher frequency sounds, (pops and crackles), are called Sferics. They are Electromagnetic energy happening in our atmosphere. "The Earth Speaks"!
Pre-print of above article
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/geomagnetics.html
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/geomagnetics.html
Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against the bombardment of particles continuously streaming from the sun. Because the solar particles (ions and electrons) are electrically charged, they feel magnetic forces and most are deflected by our planet's magnetic field. However, our magnetic field is a leaky shield and the number of particles breaching this shield depends on the orientation of the sun’s magnetic field. It had been thought that when the sun’s magnetic field is aligned with that of the Earth, the door is shut and that few if any solar particles enter Earth’s magnetic shield. The door was thought to open up when the solar magnetic field direction points opposite to Earth’s field, leading to more solar particles inside the shield. Surprisingly, recent observations by the THEMIS spacecraft fleet demonstrate that the opposite is true. "Twenty times more solar particles cross the Earth’s leaky magnetic shield when the sun’s magnetic field is aligned with that of the Earth compared to when the two magnetic fields are oppositely directed." --Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley.
There is a reason why my system responds to many things other magnetometers do not. Most are fluxgate mags. that sample a collapsing field at a very slow sample rate. My system is simply a very large induction coil that after the amplifier and filter stages couples into an analog to digital converter. I have the converter programmed to use a sample rate of 240 times per second! So the systems sees every little blip there is out there.
CMEs
May 14, 2013, Latest Xray emission from ol' sol and how it looks on Lonetree's charts.
All the short duration vertical spikes are from the event
All the short duration vertical spikes are from the event
Proton Bombardment signal, Phoenix, AZ
When the Sun starts flaring, the Earth's atmosphere receives increased amounts of X-ray and EUV fluxes. Consequently ionospheric ionization/absorption gets increased in a cause-effect relation during solar flares and CMEs. Moreover the extent of impact is different in different regions of the ionosphere. To establish the magnitude of correlation and extent of impact in different layers, data of X-ray intensity from geostationary satellite GOES and ionospheric parameter data (D & F layer) from Ionosonde over Okinawa (Japan) station (lat.26.3°N, long.158.7°E) were examined for ten X-class flares that occurred during the maximum phase of solar cycle 23 from 2000 to 2004. The data analysis revealed a positive and good correlation between fmin and X-ray intensity for D layer and NmF2 for F layer. However the correlation coefficient between fmin and X-ray intensity was found to be greater than between NmF2 and X-ray intensity. Which suggest that X-rays play a dominant role in D layer ionization than that in F layer. When Xrays from a flare impact the ionosphere my system detects the increased ionization as electrons are stripped away and positively charged ions become more the norm in the D-Layer. - Ben
CME Impact
Heliosphere
Magnetism is a property of the atom itself. Ultimately, the magnetic properties of matter are determined by the collective behavior of the negatively charged electrons that orbit the nuclei of atoms. The magnetic dipole moment (or magnetic field) of an individual electron has two components, one resulting from the spin of the electron about its own axis, the other from its orbital motion about the nucleus. Both kinds of motion may be considered as tiny circular currents (moving charges), thus linking electricity and magnetism at an atomic level.
Check the geomagnetic anomalies in your area by pulling up your locale here:
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geophysics/aeromag-na.html
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geophysics/aeromag-na.html
Earth's geomagnetic field makes the compass work and protects the biosphere from cosmic radiation. The field has existed at least three billion years, although it fluctuates in strength and at times reverses polarity. When the field strength drops too low, life on Earth is imperiled by radiation. Substantial changes in the field happen as quickly as within only a thousand years at times, although stable periods of hundreds of thousands of years also occur. Temperature patterns within the lower mantle influence both the stability and intensity of the field. Complete geomagnetic reversals on average occur every 200 thousand years-- but the last one was 780,000 years ago. Massive changes in or on the Earth, including extinction events, follow a 26.6 million to 30 million year cycle over the last 250 million years. The solar system crosses the relatively dense galactic plane every 30 million years.
Electromagnetic fields are a fundamental aspect of reality. For humans, fluctuating geomagnetic effects lead to increased liminality and anomalous experiences. Field effects include hallucination and temporal lobe microseizures. As Earth’s field continues to weaken in certain areas, we can expect more reports of dramatic psychophysical phenomena emerging at an increasing rate.
MAGNETOSENSITIVITY
Pioneering biophysics work has shown that DNA and living tissues interact with electric and magnetic fields in unexpected and dramatic ways. In 2011, cryptochrome was suggested by biophysicists as a mechanism for for perception of such suble fields. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/cryptochrome/
Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n6/full/ncomms1364.html
Human and Drosophila Cryptochromes Are Light Activated by Flavin Photoreduction in Living Cells http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060160
Expression of the Blue-Light Receptor Cryptochrome in the Human Retina http://www.iovs.org/content/44/10/4515.short
Magnetic Field Sensed by Gene, Study Shows http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28magnet.html
Humans may sense light through skin http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/July/14070801.asp
14 July 2008 A team of researchers from Europe and the US has shown that a type of protein molecule found in many different human tissues can respond to light. The finding raises the intriguing possibility that humans might be able to detect light through skin as well as the eye. Margaret Ahmad from the University of Paris VI, France, and her colleagues focused on a class of photoreceptor proteins called cryptochromes, which are activated by light in plants and trigger a number of physiological responses, such as maturation of seeds and unfurling of leaves. Cryptochromes are also found in insects and mammals, including humans. But until now no-one has known whether human cryptochromes react to light.
Humans Could Have Geomagnetic Sight http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/geomagnetic-vision/
Geomagnetic orientation using light. The ability to see Earth’s magnetic field, thought to be restricted to sea turtles and swallows and other long-distance animal navigators, may also reside in human eyes. Tests of cryptochrome 2, a key protein component of geomagnetic perception, found that its human version restored geomagnetic orientation in cryptochrome-deficient fruit flies.Researchers have described how cryptochrome seems to be a quantum compass that detects infinitesimally subtle, geomagnetically-induced variations in the spin of electrons struck by photons. From those variations, animals seem able to determine their orientation in relation to Earth’s magnetic field. Many gaps still remain in cryptochrome theory, but it’s generally thought that the cryptochrome system may be active across the animal kingdom, from fish to reptiles to birds. Humans, however, were thought to be an exception. Our own cryptochrome is considered a piece of circadian machinery, part of our molecular clock rather than any optical compass.
The new study, however, suggests that cryptochrome may be more than a clock. Seeking to test how a vertebrate cryptochrome would work in fruit flies, Reppert decided to use the human version. His team engineered flies to be cryptochrome-deficient: They struggled to orient within a magnetically-charged maze. When the researchers spliced human cryptochrome into the flies, they again found their bearings.
Sedlak discusses how a living organism is not only an information detector and generator, but is also a transformer of electromagnetic energy. Biological systems generate their own magnetic mediums through a process he calls "dia-par", or diamagnetic to paramagnetic transition. Sedlak proposes that the science of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) can be used to model living bioplasma. A wide spectrum of genetic mechanisms now appear to be under the influence of surrounding electromagnetic fields. (Roffey) Is there a correlation between the effects of electromagnetic fields and those of paranormal experience, mental intent on genetic regulation and living tissues?
Under certain conditions humans affect local geomagnetic fields. Field codes are context dependent. Local geomagnetic field fluctuations are seen to dramatically change as a function of directed mental protocols. These same fields are also changed and uniquely altered when measured in close coupling to the human body. It appears that mental protocols that send out thoughts and energy, even from distant points around the world, directly affect the local geomagnetic fields in accordance with intentions. Mankind is closely tied to Earth's geomagnetic fields, as quantum entanglement vehicles of information transfer, fields that underlie extraordinary forms of communication such as telepathy. (Chouinard). We might even find evidence that dark matter is charged (Pitkanen).
(1) We are complex electrodynamic, rather than merely chemical beings, sensitive to natural and artificial EM fields; (2) SR frequencies coincide with human brain waves, affecting subtle and gross brain-wave generation, regulating homoeostasis, healing and psi; (3) there is strong correlation between human behavioral disturbance and geomagnetic field turbulence or isolation from Schumann Wave frequencies. (Miller)
Keywords: geomagnetics, bioplasma, EMFs, coherence, resonance, liquid crystals, interference grids, photon polarization, psycho-physiological remodeling, nonlocal communication, temporal lobe transients
Electromagnetic fields are a fundamental aspect of reality. For humans, fluctuating geomagnetic effects lead to increased liminality and anomalous experiences. Field effects include hallucination and temporal lobe microseizures. As Earth’s field continues to weaken in certain areas, we can expect more reports of dramatic psychophysical phenomena emerging at an increasing rate.
MAGNETOSENSITIVITY
Pioneering biophysics work has shown that DNA and living tissues interact with electric and magnetic fields in unexpected and dramatic ways. In 2011, cryptochrome was suggested by biophysicists as a mechanism for for perception of such suble fields. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/cryptochrome/
Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n6/full/ncomms1364.html
Human and Drosophila Cryptochromes Are Light Activated by Flavin Photoreduction in Living Cells http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060160
Expression of the Blue-Light Receptor Cryptochrome in the Human Retina http://www.iovs.org/content/44/10/4515.short
Magnetic Field Sensed by Gene, Study Shows http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28magnet.html
Humans may sense light through skin http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/July/14070801.asp
14 July 2008 A team of researchers from Europe and the US has shown that a type of protein molecule found in many different human tissues can respond to light. The finding raises the intriguing possibility that humans might be able to detect light through skin as well as the eye. Margaret Ahmad from the University of Paris VI, France, and her colleagues focused on a class of photoreceptor proteins called cryptochromes, which are activated by light in plants and trigger a number of physiological responses, such as maturation of seeds and unfurling of leaves. Cryptochromes are also found in insects and mammals, including humans. But until now no-one has known whether human cryptochromes react to light.
Humans Could Have Geomagnetic Sight http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/geomagnetic-vision/
Geomagnetic orientation using light. The ability to see Earth’s magnetic field, thought to be restricted to sea turtles and swallows and other long-distance animal navigators, may also reside in human eyes. Tests of cryptochrome 2, a key protein component of geomagnetic perception, found that its human version restored geomagnetic orientation in cryptochrome-deficient fruit flies.Researchers have described how cryptochrome seems to be a quantum compass that detects infinitesimally subtle, geomagnetically-induced variations in the spin of electrons struck by photons. From those variations, animals seem able to determine their orientation in relation to Earth’s magnetic field. Many gaps still remain in cryptochrome theory, but it’s generally thought that the cryptochrome system may be active across the animal kingdom, from fish to reptiles to birds. Humans, however, were thought to be an exception. Our own cryptochrome is considered a piece of circadian machinery, part of our molecular clock rather than any optical compass.
The new study, however, suggests that cryptochrome may be more than a clock. Seeking to test how a vertebrate cryptochrome would work in fruit flies, Reppert decided to use the human version. His team engineered flies to be cryptochrome-deficient: They struggled to orient within a magnetically-charged maze. When the researchers spliced human cryptochrome into the flies, they again found their bearings.
Sedlak discusses how a living organism is not only an information detector and generator, but is also a transformer of electromagnetic energy. Biological systems generate their own magnetic mediums through a process he calls "dia-par", or diamagnetic to paramagnetic transition. Sedlak proposes that the science of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) can be used to model living bioplasma. A wide spectrum of genetic mechanisms now appear to be under the influence of surrounding electromagnetic fields. (Roffey) Is there a correlation between the effects of electromagnetic fields and those of paranormal experience, mental intent on genetic regulation and living tissues?
Under certain conditions humans affect local geomagnetic fields. Field codes are context dependent. Local geomagnetic field fluctuations are seen to dramatically change as a function of directed mental protocols. These same fields are also changed and uniquely altered when measured in close coupling to the human body. It appears that mental protocols that send out thoughts and energy, even from distant points around the world, directly affect the local geomagnetic fields in accordance with intentions. Mankind is closely tied to Earth's geomagnetic fields, as quantum entanglement vehicles of information transfer, fields that underlie extraordinary forms of communication such as telepathy. (Chouinard). We might even find evidence that dark matter is charged (Pitkanen).
(1) We are complex electrodynamic, rather than merely chemical beings, sensitive to natural and artificial EM fields; (2) SR frequencies coincide with human brain waves, affecting subtle and gross brain-wave generation, regulating homoeostasis, healing and psi; (3) there is strong correlation between human behavioral disturbance and geomagnetic field turbulence or isolation from Schumann Wave frequencies. (Miller)
Keywords: geomagnetics, bioplasma, EMFs, coherence, resonance, liquid crystals, interference grids, photon polarization, psycho-physiological remodeling, nonlocal communication, temporal lobe transients
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CME Impacts (charts by Ben Lonetree)
July 20, 2013 -
See that horizontal line way down low in frequency at the end of the arrows? It is way below 1Hz. and it tells me somewhere the planet is giving off an earthquake precursor signal. I suspect somewhere out in the pacific. It is in response to all the solar induction lately.
See that horizontal line way down low in frequency at the end of the arrows? It is way below 1Hz. and it tells me somewhere the planet is giving off an earthquake precursor signal. I suspect somewhere out in the pacific. It is in response to all the solar induction lately.
Sol July 17, 2013
June 3, 2013
JUNE 4, 2013
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I still can't get over this large proton surge. It's starting to decline now though. -BL |
11-29-11:
I am astounded as Last night's CME impact was small by normal standards and yet it created magnetic Pulsations.
I do not see it often. Nice! -BL
Below: The Pulsations happened at Delta brainwave frequency ( 1 to 3 Hz.)
Anyone have any odd dreams last night or just a good nights rest?
I am astounded as Last night's CME impact was small by normal standards and yet it created magnetic Pulsations.
I do not see it often. Nice! -BL
Below: The Pulsations happened at Delta brainwave frequency ( 1 to 3 Hz.)
Anyone have any odd dreams last night or just a good nights rest?
Nov. 30, 2011, So the other day we had Positive charge exposure and now Negative charge. All to keep us in balance.
The sun is kicking up a bit of proton and electron dust.
New chart at the top of the hour showing proton impact on the planet.
New chart at the top of the hour showing proton impact on the planet.
Coronal Mass Ejection
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Jan. 21, 2012 - CME - Lonetree saw the magnetic impulse before government facilities at Boulder,
having more sensitive equipment than theirs.
having more sensitive equipment than theirs.
1. 23.12 - Look at all the CME energy impacting us over the past several hours.
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Proton Flux: Solar protons normally have insufficient energy to penetrate through the Earth's magnetic field. However, during unusually strong solar flare events, protons can be produced with sufficient energies to penetrate deeper into the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere. Regions where deeper penetration can occur includes the north pole, south pole, and South Atlantic magnetic anomaly.
Protons are charged particles and are therefore influenced by magnetic fields. When the energetic protons leave the Sun, they preferentially follow (or are guided by) the Sun's powerful magnetic field. When solar protons enter the domain of the Earth's magnetosphere where the magnetic fields become stronger than the solar magnetic fields, they are guided by the Earth's magnetic field into the polar regions where the majority of the Earth's magnetic field lines enter and exit.
Energetic protons that are guided into the polar regions collide with atmospheric constituents and release their energy through the process of ionization. The majority of the energy is extinguished in the extreme lower region of the ionosphere (around 50-80 km in altitude). This area is particularly important to ionospheric radio communications because this is the area where most of the absorption of radio signal energy occurs. The enhanced ionization produced by incoming energetic protons increases the absorption levels in the lower ionosphere and can have the effect of completely blocking all ionospheric radio communications through the polar regions.
Protons are charged particles and are therefore influenced by magnetic fields. When the energetic protons leave the Sun, they preferentially follow (or are guided by) the Sun's powerful magnetic field. When solar protons enter the domain of the Earth's magnetosphere where the magnetic fields become stronger than the solar magnetic fields, they are guided by the Earth's magnetic field into the polar regions where the majority of the Earth's magnetic field lines enter and exit.
Energetic protons that are guided into the polar regions collide with atmospheric constituents and release their energy through the process of ionization. The majority of the energy is extinguished in the extreme lower region of the ionosphere (around 50-80 km in altitude). This area is particularly important to ionospheric radio communications because this is the area where most of the absorption of radio signal energy occurs. The enhanced ionization produced by incoming energetic protons increases the absorption levels in the lower ionosphere and can have the effect of completely blocking all ionospheric radio communications through the polar regions.
Calming Down
1.27.12
On Feb. 14th. "Valentine's Day" the Earth's magnetic field was impacted by an unknown wave of energy
that disturbed our magnetic field. It was intense enough to create Auroras.
that disturbed our magnetic field. It was intense enough to create Auroras.
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Magnetopause? For an hour and a half. Not sure from what.
Continuous unlike solar flares or earth generated EM signals.
Continuous unlike solar flares or earth generated EM signals.
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Well here is just the past three hours of high energy Electron bombardment.
Now let's see what the 18th. brings when the CME impacts from the 15th.
Another view. Usually there should be a nice straight horizontal line with a bit of positive and negative spikes.
But check this out, below.
Now let's see what the 18th. brings when the CME impacts from the 15th.
Another view. Usually there should be a nice straight horizontal line with a bit of positive and negative spikes.
But check this out, below.
Pulsing action, then a solar burst or our planet's mag. field reacting to something but look afterwards at the broad sweeping signal. Hard to see so you may wish to download the chart and zoom in a bit. I have seen this wavy action before and it is comparable to a charging of the atmosphere for lack of a better choice of words.
NOV 21, 2012, Electron Flux from CME
Sedona Skyquake - I saw a buildup within the earth or sun and a high frequency discharge right at the time Gregg and others heard sound just before 5pm. It will be so much better when my equipment is located up there.
GEOMAGNETIC FIELD EFFECTS
IS EARTH DRIVING US CRAZY?
FLIPPING OUT OVER GEOMAGNETISM
Geomagnetic Field Effects,
Paranormal Potential & the Biophysics of Anomalous Experiences
By Iona Miller, March 2009
Earth Energy State: Electromagnetism connects the entire Solar System in a profound way. Earth's geomagnetic field intensity, a dipole-dominated field, is dropping slowly but steadily. Earth's field is losing energy. At some time in the distant future -- Geomagnetic Zero Point -- the deep Earth reactor will stop spinning, melting magma, creating the aura of Earth’s geomagnetic field, and turn cold. The atmosphere will be relentlessly stripped away by the force of the solar winds, until our planet becomes a gamma ray bombarded husk like Mars. But long before that happens, we can expect normal reversals in the polarity of our magnetic field.
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is a new ultra-sensitive single atom counting method to determine the concentrations of the most relevant long-lived cosmogenic radionuclides. These isotopes are deposited chronologically in the archives of our earth, such as trees, polar ice, lake and deep sea sediments. By measuring their concentration profiles, which in most cases is possible with AMS only, information on past changes in solar activity, geomagnetic field and earth climate can be obtained over long time intervals.
Geopsychopathology: The geomagnetic field fluctuates continually. The geodynamic model has fractal properties. Even minor fluctuations in earth fields are related to psychophysical anomalies in human beings. Geomagnetism underlies and perturbs the human brain, cognitive/affective and sense perceptions. One study (Dimitrova and Stoylova) indicated that "most of the persons examined irrespective of their health status could be sensitive to the geomagnetic changes, which influence directly self-confidence and working ability." Another (Starbuck, et al, 2002) finds that motivation is influenced by geomagnetics. For some individuals and in certain locations on the globe, effects are even more pronounced and open the realm of paranormal experience. Locations with a negative effect are called geopathic stress zones because they interfere with normal immune function. They became places to avoid.
Sacred Places Attuned to Nature: The field arising from magnetic materials in the Earth's crust varies on all spatial scales and is often referred to as the anomaly field. A knowledge of the crustal magnetic field is often very valuable as a geophysical exploration tool for determining the local geology. In prehistory, our ancestors survived geomagnetic reversals, which may be the source of some creation myths. Indigenous people identified mythical locations of geomagnetic anomalies and amplified their highly-charged effects by building sacred sites for healing, dream incubation, vision quests, and as portals to deeper levels of the spirit world. Some of these vortex sites remain active. Modern research (Hild, 2006, "Places and States of Mind for Healing") confirms evidence of psychophysical effects opening a deeper awareness of the interplay of spirit and matter through weak electromagnetic interactions of Earth's telluric and cosmic fields.
Turbulence & Polarity Transitions
Climate Change: Unexpected escalation of climate change demonstrates that perturbations in natural cycles can lead to cascades of cataclysmic change related to complex dynamics. Our climate is degrading much faster than most of us thought. Likewise for the ocean-conveyor, methane traps, and other threats to human survival. One small change, such as mantle-held flux, can disrupt a system already in motion, ultimately leading to cataclysmic results. Very little is known about the behavior of the magnetic field during the transition from a superchron (long periods without reversal) to a mixed polarity state, though we can imagine intense auroras surrounding the globe. Supernova gamma ray events, galactic superwaves (Laviolette, 1986) and cometary showers have been linked with geomagnetic excursions. Complex cycles of climate migration and Earth crust instability share 1) the sun-earth relationship, embedded in the solar system, 2) solar heliopsphere and bow shock of geomagnetic field, 3) Earth's connection to our galactic center plasma fields.
Polarity Intervals: Long before pole reversal-- or more accurately, geomagnetic reversal -- we might plausibly expect an amplification of experiential effects. Recognized phenomena might escalate in ratio with fluctuations even prior to ‘tipping points.’ Ecological cataclysm looms [Lovelock (2009) The Vanishing Face of Gaia] and geomagnetic cataclysm is also a possibility. In Australia around 28,000 B.P., a wandering di-pole event signaled sudden 3x expansion of the magnetic field. Some postulate a geomagnetic excursion around 12,500 B.P. that sent tribal villagers in the Levant back to nomadic life. (Mithen, 2004)
Paleomagnetosphere: Anomalous inclinations in the South Pacific are also recorded in the geological record for 2,500 and 12,500 years ago. (Lund, et al) There is also evidence of high-energy particle bombardment at the same time, associated with extinction events. 12,000, 32,000, 43,000 and 70,000 yrs ago the reduced magnetic field rendered Earth especially vulnerable to cosmic rays. Whether geomagnetic excursions admit cosmic radiation or the gamma blasts cause the excursions is uncertain. There have been some indications that geomagnetic reversals may occur astonishingly fast-- such as within only a matter of months, according to one location of 16 million year old lava flows.
Magnetic Cataclysmic Variable: Geomagnetic reversal is chaotic in nature. Large oscillations of directions precede or follow reversals, showing waveforms with amplitude amplified by the decrease of the dipole. There is no apparent preferred location for the virtual geomagnetic poles (VGP). Asymmetry between pre- and post-reversal phases is a dominant characteristic, indicating the importance of field regeneration to initiate a new stable polarity interval. Virtual Dipole Moments show as reversed (R) polarity, intermediate-normal-reversed (I-N-R) change and subsequent normal (N) periods. There is no way we can predict it. Yet, it is a normal pursuit of science to identify and extrapolate future scenarios, including geomorphology. The goal is to anticipate and mitigate effects on humanity and the biosphere. We are challenged not by single alterations but a complex confluence of unstable systems. This is not to say, “The End is coming,” but to identify phenomena, which might arise along the way to major earth changes. It is permissible to ask, "What if..."
Chaotic Dynamics: Geomorphological systems containing bifurcations have both deterministic (universal and necessary) and probabilistic (historical happenstance) elements. They have more than one solution (configuration) and this fact calls into question notions of process domains leading to the development of characteristic forms. They possess varying degrees of susceptibility to change induced by fluctuations. They respond differently to local, regional, and global fluctuations. Geomagnetic Field (GMF) is one of these parameters. When meteor impact occurs there may be a time lag from initiating event to actual field reversal of many thousands of years. During part of the interim the field may measurably weaken down to a certain plateau. Then, after perhaps more thousands of years have passed at or near the plateau, a relatively sudden reversal may take place. There is evidence for extraordinarily rapid change of the geomagnetic field during a reversal.
Global Field Effects
HiPsiFi: The brain is affected by geomagnetic fields. Fluctuating geomagnetic effects can lead to increased liminality and anomalous experiences by perturbing the human mindbody. Liminality is a dissociative weakening of the threshold between our rational and irrational minds and is relevant to paranormal experience, both "life-potentiating" and "life depotentiating."
Field effects include "creative" and "toxic" hallucinations and temporal lobe microseizures [Krippner and Persinger]. Liminality is mediated by the temporal lobes and modulated by fields. These experiences may changes one's beliefs or worldview. Weird, strange, ambiguous or supernatural events are assigned a high reality value. This is not to say all strange events are reduced to field effects. Some things remain mysteries.
Transliminality is a consciousness variable. Regardless of their initiating source, transliminal excursions are like brief trips to the Land of Oz. Transliminality is related to ungated temporal lobe functioning which conditions mystical, religious and "high weirdness" events. Those with higher transliminality, an index of neurological interconnectedness, will experience more perceptual anomalies. (Thalbourne, 2002)
Tiny magnetic field fluctuations can have dramatic effects. Some fluctuations are sudden and unexpected. If the GMF should destabilize, scientists tell us magnetic fields of flux both entering and flowing from the Earth would become much more randomized. That is not to say it will happen in our lifetimes, but that it can happen and surely will at some point in the future.
As Earth’s local and global fields continue to weaken, can we expect more reports of strange psychophysical phenomena emerging at an increasing rate? Known effects of geomagnetic pulsation include synesthesia, anomalous cognition and [lucid] dreams, psi events, and paranormal phenomena as well as heart attack, depression and suicidal tendencies.
Can ambient magnetic fields lead to disregulation of the mindbody creating magnetic hallucinations? Is our sanity at risk as the Earth’s field fluctuates more and more? Is Earth driving us crazy?
South Atlantic Anomaly
Incredible as it seems, the magnetic field occasionally flips over. Reversals are random events. But marked field fluctuations such as the South Atlantic anomaly (magnetic field intensity 60% of predicted value) precede them. In the last 20 years, the planet's magnetic field intensity has decreased by 1.7%, and in South Atlantic by 10%. In the last two hundred years, Earth's magnetic field decreased 10% in intensity.
The South Atlantic Anomaly (SSA) is above South America, about 200 - 300 kilometers off the coast of Brazil, extending over much of South America and the nearby portion of the Van Allen Belt. It is a weak spot in the geomagnetic field, Earth’s protective bubble. The envelope here is 1/3 of normal. As the geomagnetic field continues to weaken, the inner Van Allen belt gets closer to the Earth, with a related enlargement of the SAA at given altitudes. (Hsu)
Sudden fluid motions within the Earth's core can alter the magnetic envelope around our planet. Researchers have just begun to detect such rapid magnetic field changes taking place over just a few months.
The magnetic field in the inner core is opposite the polarity of the outer core. This stabilizes the field against a tendency to reverse more frequently. The last major reversal in the field took place about 780,000 years ago. A flip in the north and south poles typically involves a weakening in the magnetic field, followed by a period of rapid recovery and reorganization of opposite polarity. Some studies in recent years have suggested the next reversal might be imminent, but the jury is still out. Weakening of Earth's overall magnetic field by 10 percent over the past 150 years might also point to an approaching field reversal.
Earth Is A Dynamo
Earth itself acts as a magnet. The Earth's magnetic field extends about 36,000 miles (58,000 km) into space, generated from the spinning effect of the electrically conductive core that acts something like a giant electromagnet. In earlier geologic history the field was 20 times stronger. Movement of the liquid and the solid parts of the Earth's core generate an electric potential, making the planet a sort of an electric generator. We have evolved in the presence of this magnetic field, the magnetosphere that also protects us from solar radiation.
But the evidence of deep time shows the geomagnetic field changes rapidly and frequently. Paleomagnetic records show that the dipole polarity of the geomagnetic field has reversed many times in the past. Geologic evidence from Steens Mountain, Oregon reveals a detailed record of magnetic reversal with shifts of up to 6 degrees per day. The mean time between reversals is roughly 200,000 years with individual reversal events taking only a couple thousand years.
Convection in the fluid outer core is continually trying to reverse the field. However, the solid inner core inhibits magnetic reversals because the field in the inner core can only change on the much longer time scale of diffusion. Only once in many attempts is a reversal successful. This is probably the reason the times between reversals of the Earth's field are long and randomly distributed.
Considerable literature exists on the biological effects of magnetic fields. Organisms respond to natural and artificial magnetic fields of various intensities, frequencies and directions. Geomagnetic fields are also influential in mass extinction events. Field deprivation and geomagnetic field variations can produce anomalous psychophysical effects. The geomagnetic field modulates biological and artificial magnetic fields.
Geophysics
The magnetosophere is a highly stable field constantly bombarded by energetically charged solar particles (solar wind). Normally, some days are magnetically stormy, while others are calm. Earth's magnetic field is currently changing dramatically as part of its normal cyclic behavior. Is the observed decrease of the dipole moment indicating a future polarity transition? What would be the effects of such a drastic change on system Earth? What positive or negative effects on our biosphere or even humans can be expected?
Affected by weather, the Moon and sunspots, regular daily and monthly fluctuations occur in the Geomagnetic Field (GMF). Fluctuations in the level of the GMF, a quasi-static magnetic field, and geomagnetic storms have been associated with a number of health effects and disorders in scientific literature for more than 50 years. Changes in the geomagnetic field have deviated from the predictions of the original International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF) coefficients.
Pole Position
When will our compasses fail? Scientists from the Institute for Geomagnetism at the Russian Academy of Sciences say the Earth's magnet poles are gradually drifting towards the Equator, with the field intensity falling slowly, but steadily. The latter reaches zero point in about 2,000 years, which would be a disaster for living organisms. The rate of changes happening to the planet's liquid core, however, could mean that the polarity shift is going to happen much sooner. en.rian.ru/analysis/200...16577165.html
No one would have believed a hundred years ago that the South and the North could switch places. Nevertheless, in 1906, research revealed that in the past magnetization of some rocks was opposite to that of the present day.
In 2001, an international polar expedition revealed that in the recent seven years the North magnetic pole shifted around 300 km (186.4 miles). Currently, it is drifting 40 km (24.85 miles) a year from the Canadian Arctic shelf towards Russia's Severnaya Zemlya islands. Scientists predict the North Pole could eventually be found in the South Atlantic, site of an extensive anomaly area with the magnetic field intensity at around 60% of the predicted value.
What are the dangers of such massive fluctuations? Russian scientists include our anti-radiation protection falling, with space flights becoming impossible and energy-dependent systems, including mobile phones and satellites, failing. Solar and space radiation would affect the genome of the organisms inhabiting the Earth, causing some of them to become extinct, and others to have a much larger per cent of mutations. Taking into account the solar flares, accompanied by extremely powerful electrojet currents, life is likely to become impossible on Earth before the full magnetic field collapses.
Sounds terrible. But it isn't imminent, though possible. Recent reports say that in the last 90 million years, the magnetic poles changed around every 500,000 years, with no total extinction or mass genetic mutations of living organisms taking place. The atmosphere remains a reliable guarantor of the Earth's biosphere.
On the other hand, scientists haven't established so far if the changes happening to the geomagnetic field are reversible. Nobody has ever found out why the Earth's history has seen times when the magnetic poles remained unshifted as long as 50 million years.
Pole Reversal
We know about pole shift from an examination of the geological record -- the magnetic poles reverse without the axis of the Earth flipping in any way. We can read the evidence of many magnetic reversals in the relentless march of the seabed floor. Valkovic links massive faunal extinctions with polarity reversals in earth’s geomagnetic field. He assumed that the concentration factor for essential trace elements is dependent on the magnetic field.
When lavas are deposited on the Earth’s surface, and subsequently freeze, and when sediments are deposited on ocean and lake bottoms, and subsequently solidify, they often preserve a signature of the ambient magnetic field at the time of deposition. This type of magnetization is known as 'paleomagnetism'. Sediment samples from Chalco Lake, Mexico "shows low frequency components with characteristic periods of 10,500, 3200–3400, 2900–3000, 1400–1500 and 800–900 years. In phase oscillations of inclination and intensity records point to drifting non dipole field anomalies." (B. Ortega-Guerrero and J. Urrutia-Fucugauchi, 1997)
Careful measurements of oriented samples of faintly magnetized rocks taken from many geographical sites allow scientists to work out the geological history of the magnetic field. We can tell, for example, that the Earth has had a magnetic field for at least 3.5 billion years, and that the field has always exhibited a certain amount of time-dependence, part of which is normal variation. Part of the cycle is an occasional reversal of polarity; the magnetic field occasionally flips over! The same effect occurs spontaneously in 3D computer models of the Geomagnetic Field. A similar reversal happens to the Sun every 11 years.
The geomagnetic poles are currently roughly coincident with the geographic poles, because the rotation of the Earth is an important dynamical force in the core, where the main part of the field is generated. Occasionally, however, the variation becomes sufficiently large so the magnetic poles end up being located rather distantly from the geographic poles. The poles have undergone an ‘excursion’ from their preferred state.
We know from physics that the Earth’s dynamo is just as capable of generating a magnetic field with a polarity like that which we have today, as it is capable of generating a field with the opposite polarity. The dynamo has no preference for a particular polarity. Therefore, after an excursional period, the magnetic field, upon returning to its usual state of rough alignment with the Earth’s rotational axis, could just as easily have one polarity as another.
The consequences of polarity reversals for the compass are dramatic. Nowadays, the compass points roughly north, or, more precisely, the north end of the compass points roughly north at most geographical locations. However 780,000 years ago, the polarity was reversed, so a hypothetical compass pointed roughly south. Before that reversed state the polarity was like that which we have today, and the compass would have pointed roughly north, and so on. The timings of reversals forms the so-called 'geomagnetic polarity timescale'.
During a reversal the geometry of the magnetic field is much more complicated than it is now. A compass could point in almost any direction depending on one’s location on the Earth and the exact form of the mid-transitional magnetic field. There is no apparent periodicity to reversals. They are random events, happening as often as every 10 thousand years or so, and as infrequently as every 50 million years or more.
Human Effects
We know that the iron core of our earth vibrates at 40 Hertz (40 pulses per second.) Our earth's crust has a different vibrational speed at around 7.5 Hertz. When we are at the height of our brain thinking activity we record roughly 40 Hertz and in meditative states a 7.5 Hertz low brain activity. This draws a direct correlation between the earth’s core environment, the earth's outer crust environment pulse rate and our upper and lower end brain function.
Rhythmically changing electric, magnetic and electromagnetic fields are ubiquitous in our environment. Some of these fields are natural; others are produced by household appliances and technologies. Many people are adversely affected by natural and/or artificial energy fields (clinically termed weather or electromagnetic sensitivity). Often affected individuals do not recognize the sources of their ailments.
There is positive correlation between EEG and geomagnetic activity. Disturbances in geomagnetic fields (e.g. caused by solar and terrestrial magnetic storms) have been correlated with the onset of a variety of disorders, including heart attacks, increased blood pressure, seizures and strokes. Also, decreases in nocturnal melatonin, enhanced anxiety, heart rate, sleep disturbance, psychiatric admissions (Persinger), light sensitivity, SIDS, depression, suicide and sudden death. www.electric-fields.bris.ac.uk/ge...pdf
Persinger has conclusively demonstrated that electromagnetic fields can trigger mini-seizures. Geomagnetic fluctuations have been studied in this regard. Abnormalities in the temporal lobes (TLE) caused by genetics, injury, or infections can lead to amplification of "spiritual" characteristics in the personality.
Are some people predisposed to psychism, mystical visions, or religious zeal? What lies at the root of the personality to drive the "seeker" in a spiritual quest? How does one come by an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic perception of paranormal effects or presences, such as gods or demons, aliens or nature spirits? Are we hardwired for religious beliefs? Or do some of us just have more magnetite in our bodies?
Temporal lobe seizures mimic or perhaps even embody certain essentially religious experiences -- God Experiences. This tendency may be reinforced by a kindling process potentiating pathways to the amygdala and other parts of the brain. Emotional tone and multisensory content of these experiences is dependent on which lobe and portion of the temporal lobes become unstable and subject to seizures, clinical or sub-clinical.
The phenomena which appear pathologically in TLE can also appear in the general population, and are often even encouraged by the practice of meditation. The union of brain science and theology is called neurotheology, which studies all related religious and spiritual phenomena and their neurological roots. We might also look to the magnetic environment for subtle triggers. (Miller, 2003, neurotheology.50megs.com/whats...9.html )
If magnetic force is strong enough, TLTs can be kindled in normal individuals. Among the most electrically unstable portions of the brain, the temporal lobes are quite sensitive to extremely low magnetic frequencies (Persinger). Persinger has tickled the temporal lobes of enough individuals to define the parameters of electromagnetic shifts on brain function. Medical use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to relieve psychological symptoms such as depression indicates that the mind may be an electromagnetic field.
There is a continuum of temporal lobe lability or sensitivity, and even normal individuals have sub-clinical microseizures frequently, particularly during REM or dreams. The full-blown effects of such electrical storms are seen in petit mal and grand mal seizures of epilepsy.
Epileptic seizures propagate across the brain through a process called “kindling.” Nerve signals are amplified exponentially, resulting in a chaotic electrical storm that can entrain more than one brain area. For example, in temporal lobe epilepsy, spreading includes the temporal lobe, underlying limbic structures and hippocampus; all of them fire in an overexcited manner, especially if serotonin levels are low.
Epilepsy is triggered by different parts of the brain. Behavioral changes immediately preceding an epileptic seizure indicate what portion of the brain is the focus of the seizure. Electrical lability, or seizures in the temporal lobes do not usually cause physical convulsions, unless they propagate to the motor regions.
Not all those with intense spiritual experiences have temporal lobe epilepsy. Meditators often sit for years before experiencing the slightest tingles or visions of light. But often once manifestations begin, they increase in frequency and tend to stabilize. They can come as sounds, smells, intense feeling, visionary landscapes or forms of living entities, or amorphous lights. These inner experiences feel as real or seem more real than external perception.
The temporal lobes host many structures and functions including memory, orientation of self in space and time, interpretations of meaning and emotional significance, organization of audio and visual patterns, smell, and language. Local discharges can be potentiated by specific memory recall or extremely low biofrequency magnetic fields penetrating brain tissue.
Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is accompanied by classic personality changes. Though some researchers disagree, attributed characteristics include the following: loss of humor; intense affect; moodswings (peaks or highs, depressions, distortions, aggression); suggestibility; existential anxiety; neophobia; hypergraphia; an intense active interest in dreams, religion and philosophy; reports of psi experiences. Supreme faith is placed in the validity of subjective experience. Unusual experiences are assigned special personal meaning. They accept logical incongruities, displaying a rigid core of private beliefs.
This later spiritual interest can be rooted in subjective experiences of a variety of phenomena kindled by electrical instabilities in the brain. They include, but are not limited to depersonalization, time distortion, anxiety or panic, floating or falling sensations, peripheral imagery, a sense of presence either sacred or malefic, apparitions, downloading of memory sequences and false memory confabulations or fantasies, voices and visionary experiences ranging from heavenly to hellish, and a panoply of psychophysical manifestations.
Makes Me Want to Psi
Psi Is a Geomagnetic Field Correlate
Paranormal experiences (sensed presence, time distortion, information acquisition, death crisis, eccentric thinking) can be "induced" by a variety of fields. They are associated with geomagnetic activity or lack of it and neuronal activity of the temporal lobes. Sources of stimuli range from chaotic activity to field effects. Paranormal beliefs are related to paranormal experiences, often substituting for traditional religious beliefs.
We live in a dense soup of natural and artificial magnetic fields induced by electric charges moving through electric fields. Each event we experience as humans is centered in its own electromagnetic field. Psi phenomena [healing, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, psychokinesis, poltergeists, hauntings] are complex field effects. A field is a matrix, a region of influence that invisibly connects two or more points in space or time with visible, informational or energetic effects.
A 1991 article in Bioelectromagnetics Magazine is called, "The Solar Wind and Hallucinations, --a possible relation due to magnetic disturbances.” Walter and Steffani Randall recount breakthrough research showing psychophysical correlations with increased GMF (geomagnetic field) periods. Data from the 19th century on hallucinations and magnetic disturbances were found to exhibit a direct and statistically significant correlation. Magnetic influences on the pineal hormone, melatonin, are suggested as a possible source of variation.
Geomagnetic activity is related to mental activity. Research suggests lower geomagnetic activity correlates with increased psi activity such as telepathy and anomalous dreams. Conversely, magnetically stormy days correlate with violent crime, bereavement hallucinations, (sleep) paralysis episodes, psychokinesis and poltergeist phenomena.
This nonlocal field may be enhanced or disrupted by a variety of environmental conditions [Krippner, Persinger, Spottiswoode, McTaggart, Lazslo]. Bursts of creativity in all cultural forms flourish in years of highest solar activity. The same covariance was found between hallucinations and magnetic disturbances.
Geomagnetic Field effects have yet to be conclusively demonstrated. Do geomagnetic fields carry psi information or effect the modulation of brainwave activity? We might suspect field coherence or resonance phenomena. Is this field phenomenon more perceptible in shamanic or altered states of consciousness?
In "Geomagnetic Field Effects in Anomalous Dreams and the Akashic Field," Krippner reports a relationship between geomagnetic fluctuations, lunar cycle, and sunspot activity with anomalous dreams, including telepathic, clairvoyant and precognitive content. Other factors, including the holographic mechanism (vacuum wave interference patterns) of the nonlocal zero-point field may also be influential. In psi tests, "hits" and "misses" are statistically significant relative to geomagnetic fields.
S. James P. Spottiswoode (1997) summarizes in “Geomagnetic fluctuations and free-response anomalous cognition: a new understanding,” as follows:
For some years there has been speculation that anomalous cognition (AC) performance may be correlated with global geomagnetic field (GMF) fluctuations. This idea arose from the work of Persinger (e.g., Persinger & Schout, 1988), who found that anecdotal cases of putative AC occurred on days when GMF fluctuations were significantly lower than on the preceding and following days. Many workers have investigated whether or not this interesting observation could be extended to laboratory anomalous cognition, but with mixed results.
Tart (1988) and Persinger and Krippner (1989) found an association between high-scoring AC trials and low GMF fluctuations, while Haraldsson and Gissurarson (1987) and Nelson and Dunne (1986) did not. In an unpublished meta-analysis, this author collected 1,468 free-response trials from 21 studies, reasoning that the effect, if it existed, would be most easily detected in a large database with high effect size; in fact, the overall correlation was a disappointing -0.0002 (Spearman's [Rho], N = 1,468, ns). The first step to understanding the physics of anomalous cognition will probably be the discovery of physical variables that unambiguously modulate the effect.
Persinger has experimented with weak complex, time-varying magnetic fields applied to the brains of human subjects. Some people are more susceptible to field variance than others. This application has been dubbed EIF or Experience Inducing Fields. Not all magnetic anomalies have implications for experience. Ambient geomagnetic fields are usually considered too weak to initiate but always undergird anomalous events, including hallucination. Neural entrainment confuses the brain into hallucinations it accepts as sensory information). EIF’s are fluctuations on top of the local dynamic field.
Visual hallucinations include circles, ellipses and triangles. Persinger conjectures that geomagnetic activity may enhance the receptivity of the brain to extrasensory signals, noting in particular that sudden decreases in geomagnetic activity may decrease the likelihood of certain types of electrical seizures in the brain. Persinger contends that increases in geomagnetic activity tend to lower seizure thresholds and may even precipitate convulsions in epileptics.
Some scientists (e.g., Radin, McAlpine & Cunningham, 1994; and Adair, 1991) have, however, expressed skepticism that changes in the geomagnetic field would have sufficient strength to produce any physiological effects on the human body at all. As a second possibility, Persinger suggests that lowered geomagnetic activity might enhance the signal carrying the ESP message, which he has speculated may consist in part of extremely low frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Adrian Ryan [2008] reports,
Geomagnetic field measurements were collected from the SAMNET array of magnetometers in Northern Europe. Measurements were selected from the nearest operating magnetometer at the time of each ESP trial; the mean distance between magnetometer and ESP trial location was 126 km (minimum 2 km, maximum 261 km). The sampling interval was 5 seconds until mid-November 1995 and 1 second thereafter. The amplitude resolution of the measurements is 0.1 nT. The field measurements were converted by fast Fourier transform into power within five frequency bands. Pulsations with frequency > 0.1 Hz were found to be highly geographically localized, therefore data for these frequency bands were discarded for all but the 99 remote viewing trials conducted at in York, for which the magnetometer was also located in York.
Two patterns were observed: ESP was found to succeed only during periods of enhanced pulsation activity within the 0.2-0.5 Hz band, but ESP effect was absent during the most disturbed periods of activity in the 0.025-0.1 Hz band.
Analysis of the continuous record of geomagnetic field measurements between November 1996 and March 2005 revealed that activity in the 0.025-0.1 Hz range is strongly correlated with the global index of geomagnetic activity ap, but no such relationship exists between activity in the 0.2-0.5 Hz band and ap, which may account for the overall slight negative correlation between ESP and ap reported in the literature.
As each frequency band of geomagnetic pulsation exhibits distinct seasonal and/or interacting seasonal/daily variation, they make excellent candidates for explaining the associations between ESP and LST that have been reported in the literature. To explore this possibility, the ESP effect size for trials in the database was plotted by LST; the resultant pattern was similar to that found by Spottiswoode (1997a, 1997b). Modeling revealed that this shape was partially attributable to the pattern of ESP results by pulsation activity in the 0.2-0.5 Hz band.
Vortex Phenomena
Naturally occurring electromagnetic waves entrain human brainwaves. Unusual magnetic areas – “hotspots” -- provide mini-laboratories for investigating anomalous geomagnetic effects. They have been honored or feared by primal peoples from the dawn of time. Magnetic vortexes, such as those found in the iron-rich soil of Sedona, Southern Oregon and elsewhere are legendary places where unusual electromagnetic phenomena abound.
Hopi Indians say the earth energy field is damaged in some way. Like many indigenous people around the world who preserve the ancient wisdom, they insist that nuclear testing and the high-tech mining of ‘power places’ is somehow short-circuiting the system – that the "hoop of the world has been broken". In fact, the old people say, "The big blow is going to come again!" (White, 1993)
These hotspot areas of subtle earth energies often have a deep base of crystalline rock. Ten percent of the earth's total magnetic field fluctuates significantly over decade time scales, apparently reflecting the unsteady exchange of angular momentum between the core and the mantle in the velocity field.
Initially a skeptic, electrical engineer, Ben Lonetree <sedonanomalies.com describes iron-rich soil as “focusing” non-dipole geomagnetism that exhibits upward and downward motion. This is a Vortex. Lonetree was able to conclusively demonstrate what others have long conjectured.
[more at ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...8.html ]
During a vortex event, monitoring equipment detects no N-S polarity. Compass instabilities plus upswing and downswing in field intensity can indicate vortex activity. You can catch a vortex in the act of dramatically increasing local field activity by orders of magnitude. Lonetree calls this a “Sudden Magnetic Impulse event.”
When the event passes, a compass will once again behave normally as outflow or inflow ceases. Lonetree has verified his readings by observing Schumann Resonances (SR), difficult to filter from ambient, artificial electronic noise or “smog.” He uses one computer to monitor SR and another to monitor magnetic intensity. Lonetree also makes it clear, despite the pseudo-scientific assertions of others, that SR is NOT rising, as his longterm readings clearly show.
Lonetree made observations, locally and globally, of Schumann Resonances in various areas of Arizona to see if distinctions emerged in the vortex hotspots. Schumann Resonance is 20,000 times less in intensity than the earth’s magnetic field. The SR pulse acts as a "driver" of our brains and might also potentially carry information. Entrainment is a process of synchronization where vibrations cause an object to oscillate at the same rate, affecting psychology and physiology.
He generated spectrographs to, “provide a point of reference to discuss and demonstrate Geomagnetic affects on the first resonance." Each of the seven Schumann Resonances occupies a bandwidth of 1 Hz. In other words, each of the resonances is 1 Hz. wide: 7.83 Hz, 14 Hz, 21 Hz, 26 Hz, 33 Hz, 39 Hz, and 45 Hz.
“Vortex Action” increases the intensity (strength) of correlated SR readings. For example, the 7.83 Hz Resonance increases in strength relative to that of the vortex event. The peak of the magnetic amplitude is coincidental with the peak of SR amplitude.
Certain geophysical conditions also function like amplifiers and speakers, making the natural electromagnetic ‘voice’ of the planet louder. Lonetree’s gut-feeling is that these are not waves of electromagnetic energy, but rather a gentle oscillation of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
This frequency also happens to fall between two of the human brainwaves, Alpha and Theta. There are four altogether: Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta. When our brain is functioning restfully in the predominantly alpha/theta zone, we become more relaxed or peaceful. The human brain acts like an electrical circuit called a phase-lock loop. A local external (outside the body) electromagnetic signal, as long as it is stronger than our brainwaves, initiates a resonance effect where the brain locks onto and resonates at that frequency.
Inflow and outflow are intermittent with typical events lasting 90 seconds to 2 minutes – a spike in magnetic activity. Twisted, rotating spiral or circular lines of magnetic force enter and emerge from the earth in specific local areas. They can be monitored electronically with Fluxgate detectors, induction coils or proton precession magnetometers, measuring the strength and direction of the local field.
Vortex activity causes trees to grow in gnarled and twisted patterns, creating other observational and perceptual clues to their existence, beyond the subjective. They are also purported to have unique psychophysical effects on certain individuals, mostly relevant to health and well-being.
We are complex electrodynamic, rather than chemical beings. We are subject to natural and artificial EM fields. SR frequencies coincide with human brain waves. There is a strong correlation between human behavioral disturbance or enhancement and geomagnetic field turbulence.
Hot Spot Alpha
One of the effects of meditation is to "quiet the mind" to facilitate the "free-run" (or silent thalamic periods) that allows entrainment by natural geophysical rhythms. This tuning or "magnetoreception" is mediated by the pineal gland, (30% of its cells are magnetically sensitive), and organic magnetite-containing tissues.
Up-flow Vortexes are said to boost healing, creativity, visions, spiritual skills, exhilaration, and expand consciousness. Many claim to experience increases in UFO sightings and presence. Places labeled as a magnetic vortex are areas of inflow energy. Some claim an area labeled an electric vortex is an area of up-flow energy.
Lonetree laudes the virtues of magnetically-supercharged brainwave entrainment. With his spectrographic evidence, he knowledgeably declares, “Sitting on top of a magnetic outflow while the first Schumann Resonance promotes a state of Alpha / Theta is an experience you will never forget!”
Paranormal experiences (sensed presence, time distortion, information acquisition, death crisis, eccentric thinking) can be "induced" by a variety of fields. They are associated with geomagnetic activity or lack of it and neuronal activity of the temporal lobes. Sources of stimuli range from chaotic activity to field effects. Paranormal beliefs are related to paranormal experiences, often substituting for traditional religious beliefs.
We live in a dense soup of natural and artificial magnetic fields induced by electric charges moving through electric fields. Each event we experience as humans is centered in its own electromagnetic field. Psi phenomena [healing, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, psychokinesis, poltergeists, hauntings] are complex field effects. A field is a matrix, a region of influence that invisibly connects two or more points in space or time with visible, informational or energetic effects.
A 1991 article in Bioelectromagnetics Magazine is called, "The Solar Wind and Hallucinations, --a possible relation due to magnetic disturbances.” Walter and Steffani Randall recount breakthrough research showing psychophysical correlations with increased GMF (geomagnetic field) periods. Data from the 19th century on hallucinations and magnetic disturbances were found to exhibit a direct and statistically significant correlation. Magnetic influences on the pineal hormone, melatonin, are suggested as a possible source of variation.
Geomagnetic activity is related to mental activity. Research suggests lower geomagnetic activity correlates with increased psi activity such as telepathy and anomalous dreams. Conversely, magnetically stormy days correlate with violent crime, bereavement hallucinations, (sleep) paralysis episodes, psychokinesis and poltergeist phenomena.
This nonlocal field may be enhanced or disrupted by a variety of environmental conditions [Krippner, Persinger, Spottiswoode, McTaggart, Lazslo]. Bursts of creativity in all cultural forms flourish in years of highest solar activity. The same covariance was found between hallucinations and magnetic disturbances.
Geomagnetic Field effects have yet to be conclusively demonstrated. Do geomagnetic fields carry psi information or effect the modulation of brainwave activity? We might suspect field coherence or resonance phenomena. Is this field phenomenon more perceptible in shamanic or altered states of consciousness?
In "Geomagnetic Field Effects in Anomalous Dreams and the Akashic Field," Krippner reports a relationship between geomagnetic fluctuations, lunar cycle, and sunspot activity with anomalous dreams, including telepathic, clairvoyant and precognitive content. Other factors, including the holographic mechanism (vacuum wave interference patterns) of the nonlocal zero-point field may also be influential. In psi tests, "hits" and "misses" are statistically significant relative to geomagnetic fields.
S. James P. Spottiswoode (1997) summarizes in “Geomagnetic fluctuations and free-response anomalous cognition: a new understanding,” as follows:
For some years there has been speculation that anomalous cognition (AC) performance may be correlated with global geomagnetic field (GMF) fluctuations. This idea arose from the work of Persinger (e.g., Persinger & Schout, 1988), who found that anecdotal cases of putative AC occurred on days when GMF fluctuations were significantly lower than on the preceding and following days. Many workers have investigated whether or not this interesting observation could be extended to laboratory anomalous cognition, but with mixed results.
Tart (1988) and Persinger and Krippner (1989) found an association between high-scoring AC trials and low GMF fluctuations, while Haraldsson and Gissurarson (1987) and Nelson and Dunne (1986) did not. In an unpublished meta-analysis, this author collected 1,468 free-response trials from 21 studies, reasoning that the effect, if it existed, would be most easily detected in a large database with high effect size; in fact, the overall correlation was a disappointing -0.0002 (Spearman's [Rho], N = 1,468, ns). The first step to understanding the physics of anomalous cognition will probably be the discovery of physical variables that unambiguously modulate the effect.
Persinger has experimented with weak complex, time-varying magnetic fields applied to the brains of human subjects. Some people are more susceptible to field variance than others. This application has been dubbed EIF or Experience Inducing Fields. Not all magnetic anomalies have implications for experience. Ambient geomagnetic fields are usually considered too weak to initiate but always undergird anomalous events, including hallucination. Neural entrainment confuses the brain into hallucinations it accepts as sensory information). EIF’s are fluctuations on top of the local dynamic field.
Visual hallucinations include circles, ellipses and triangles. Persinger conjectures that geomagnetic activity may enhance the receptivity of the brain to extrasensory signals, noting in particular that sudden decreases in geomagnetic activity may decrease the likelihood of certain types of electrical seizures in the brain. Persinger contends that increases in geomagnetic activity tend to lower seizure thresholds and may even precipitate convulsions in epileptics.
Some scientists (e.g., Radin, McAlpine & Cunningham, 1994; and Adair, 1991) have, however, expressed skepticism that changes in the geomagnetic field would have sufficient strength to produce any physiological effects on the human body at all. As a second possibility, Persinger suggests that lowered geomagnetic activity might enhance the signal carrying the ESP message, which he has speculated may consist in part of extremely low frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Adrian Ryan [2008] reports,
Geomagnetic field measurements were collected from the SAMNET array of magnetometers in Northern Europe. Measurements were selected from the nearest operating magnetometer at the time of each ESP trial; the mean distance between magnetometer and ESP trial location was 126 km (minimum 2 km, maximum 261 km). The sampling interval was 5 seconds until mid-November 1995 and 1 second thereafter. The amplitude resolution of the measurements is 0.1 nT. The field measurements were converted by fast Fourier transform into power within five frequency bands. Pulsations with frequency > 0.1 Hz were found to be highly geographically localized, therefore data for these frequency bands were discarded for all but the 99 remote viewing trials conducted at in York, for which the magnetometer was also located in York.
Two patterns were observed: ESP was found to succeed only during periods of enhanced pulsation activity within the 0.2-0.5 Hz band, but ESP effect was absent during the most disturbed periods of activity in the 0.025-0.1 Hz band.
Analysis of the continuous record of geomagnetic field measurements between November 1996 and March 2005 revealed that activity in the 0.025-0.1 Hz range is strongly correlated with the global index of geomagnetic activity ap, but no such relationship exists between activity in the 0.2-0.5 Hz band and ap, which may account for the overall slight negative correlation between ESP and ap reported in the literature.
As each frequency band of geomagnetic pulsation exhibits distinct seasonal and/or interacting seasonal/daily variation, they make excellent candidates for explaining the associations between ESP and LST that have been reported in the literature. To explore this possibility, the ESP effect size for trials in the database was plotted by LST; the resultant pattern was similar to that found by Spottiswoode (1997a, 1997b). Modeling revealed that this shape was partially attributable to the pattern of ESP results by pulsation activity in the 0.2-0.5 Hz band.
Vortex Phenomena
Naturally occurring electromagnetic waves entrain human brainwaves. Unusual magnetic areas – “hotspots” -- provide mini-laboratories for investigating anomalous geomagnetic effects. They have been honored or feared by primal peoples from the dawn of time. Magnetic vortexes, such as those found in the iron-rich soil of Sedona, Southern Oregon and elsewhere are legendary places where unusual electromagnetic phenomena abound.
Hopi Indians say the earth energy field is damaged in some way. Like many indigenous people around the world who preserve the ancient wisdom, they insist that nuclear testing and the high-tech mining of ‘power places’ is somehow short-circuiting the system – that the "hoop of the world has been broken". In fact, the old people say, "The big blow is going to come again!" (White, 1993)
These hotspot areas of subtle earth energies often have a deep base of crystalline rock. Ten percent of the earth's total magnetic field fluctuates significantly over decade time scales, apparently reflecting the unsteady exchange of angular momentum between the core and the mantle in the velocity field.
Initially a skeptic, electrical engineer, Ben Lonetree <sedonanomalies.com describes iron-rich soil as “focusing” non-dipole geomagnetism that exhibits upward and downward motion. This is a Vortex. Lonetree was able to conclusively demonstrate what others have long conjectured.
[more at ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...8.html ]
During a vortex event, monitoring equipment detects no N-S polarity. Compass instabilities plus upswing and downswing in field intensity can indicate vortex activity. You can catch a vortex in the act of dramatically increasing local field activity by orders of magnitude. Lonetree calls this a “Sudden Magnetic Impulse event.”
When the event passes, a compass will once again behave normally as outflow or inflow ceases. Lonetree has verified his readings by observing Schumann Resonances (SR), difficult to filter from ambient, artificial electronic noise or “smog.” He uses one computer to monitor SR and another to monitor magnetic intensity. Lonetree also makes it clear, despite the pseudo-scientific assertions of others, that SR is NOT rising, as his longterm readings clearly show.
Lonetree made observations, locally and globally, of Schumann Resonances in various areas of Arizona to see if distinctions emerged in the vortex hotspots. Schumann Resonance is 20,000 times less in intensity than the earth’s magnetic field. The SR pulse acts as a "driver" of our brains and might also potentially carry information. Entrainment is a process of synchronization where vibrations cause an object to oscillate at the same rate, affecting psychology and physiology.
He generated spectrographs to, “provide a point of reference to discuss and demonstrate Geomagnetic affects on the first resonance." Each of the seven Schumann Resonances occupies a bandwidth of 1 Hz. In other words, each of the resonances is 1 Hz. wide: 7.83 Hz, 14 Hz, 21 Hz, 26 Hz, 33 Hz, 39 Hz, and 45 Hz.
“Vortex Action” increases the intensity (strength) of correlated SR readings. For example, the 7.83 Hz Resonance increases in strength relative to that of the vortex event. The peak of the magnetic amplitude is coincidental with the peak of SR amplitude.
Certain geophysical conditions also function like amplifiers and speakers, making the natural electromagnetic ‘voice’ of the planet louder. Lonetree’s gut-feeling is that these are not waves of electromagnetic energy, but rather a gentle oscillation of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
This frequency also happens to fall between two of the human brainwaves, Alpha and Theta. There are four altogether: Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta. When our brain is functioning restfully in the predominantly alpha/theta zone, we become more relaxed or peaceful. The human brain acts like an electrical circuit called a phase-lock loop. A local external (outside the body) electromagnetic signal, as long as it is stronger than our brainwaves, initiates a resonance effect where the brain locks onto and resonates at that frequency.
Inflow and outflow are intermittent with typical events lasting 90 seconds to 2 minutes – a spike in magnetic activity. Twisted, rotating spiral or circular lines of magnetic force enter and emerge from the earth in specific local areas. They can be monitored electronically with Fluxgate detectors, induction coils or proton precession magnetometers, measuring the strength and direction of the local field.
Vortex activity causes trees to grow in gnarled and twisted patterns, creating other observational and perceptual clues to their existence, beyond the subjective. They are also purported to have unique psychophysical effects on certain individuals, mostly relevant to health and well-being.
We are complex electrodynamic, rather than chemical beings. We are subject to natural and artificial EM fields. SR frequencies coincide with human brain waves. There is a strong correlation between human behavioral disturbance or enhancement and geomagnetic field turbulence.
Hot Spot Alpha
One of the effects of meditation is to "quiet the mind" to facilitate the "free-run" (or silent thalamic periods) that allows entrainment by natural geophysical rhythms. This tuning or "magnetoreception" is mediated by the pineal gland, (30% of its cells are magnetically sensitive), and organic magnetite-containing tissues.
Up-flow Vortexes are said to boost healing, creativity, visions, spiritual skills, exhilaration, and expand consciousness. Many claim to experience increases in UFO sightings and presence. Places labeled as a magnetic vortex are areas of inflow energy. Some claim an area labeled an electric vortex is an area of up-flow energy.
Lonetree laudes the virtues of magnetically-supercharged brainwave entrainment. With his spectrographic evidence, he knowledgeably declares, “Sitting on top of a magnetic outflow while the first Schumann Resonance promotes a state of Alpha / Theta is an experience you will never forget!”
REFERENCES
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BERGIANNAKI, J.-D., PAPARRIGOPOULOS, T. J. AND STEFANIS, C. N., 1996. Seasonal pattern of melatonin excretion inhumans: relationship to day length variation rate and geomagnetic field fluctuations. Experientia, 52, 253-258.
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CHOUINARD, EDMOND, Mind-Matter Entanglement with Geomagnetic Fields http://www.emergentmind.org/ChouinardI.htm
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KRIPPNER, STANLEY, “The Akashic Field and Psychic Dreams” - Persinger conducted an analysis of reports of telepathy and clairvoyance from a popular magazine. He found that these reported experiences were more likely to occur when the global geomagnetic activity was significantly quieter than the days before or the days after the experience. A day characterized by slow, predictable variations in the field is referred to as a "quiet" magnetic day. These were the days that were associated with reports of telepathy and clairvoyance (Persinger, 1985). About the same time, Marcia Adams (1986) studied the relationship between quiet magnetic days with success in clairvoyance experiments that had been conducted in another laboratory, finding a positive connection. A day of sudden and large field changes is referred to as a magnetically stormy day. Persinger noted a tendency for reports of poltergeist and haunting experiences to occur on these days (Persinger, 1989). Psychokinesis (in other words, anomalous effects on distant objects or activity) has been studied in the laboratory under psi task conditions. One analysis of these experiments has indicated a tendency for them to occur most frequently on magnetically stormy days (Braud & Dennis, 1989).
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Lonetree, Ben and Iona Miller (2004), “SIREN SONG OF THE EARTH: Investigating Vortex Theory & EM Signals with Ben Lonetree,” Nexus Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 2 Feb/Mar ’05, Int’l; Mar/Apr ‘05 North America. ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...8.html
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Geomagnetism Geoscience Australia maintains a national network of geomagnetic observatories, which are part of a global network. It aims to 'promote public safety through the provision of compass and magnetometer calibration information, and help mitigate the potential hazardous effects of magnetic storms on radio and satellite communications, radar, global positioning system (GPS), spacecraft, powerlines and pipelines'. Geoscience Australia's geomagnetism site provides geomagnetism data, information and reports. It includes Australian geomagnetic reference field values, minute values, geomagnetic indices, real time magnetograms from the Canberra observatory, and the Australian Geomagnetism Report (PDF format, Adobe Reader required).
www.ga.gov.au/geomag/index.jsp
USGS GEOMAG Realtime Readings - geomag.usgs.gov/realtime/
Because the Earth’s magnetic field is complicated in space and time, because it has such a variety of causes and affects, and because it is of both scientific interest and practical importance, the USGS Geomagnetism Program has, for over a century, monitored the field through a network of magnetic observatories and conducted scientific analysis on those data.
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©2009 Iona Miller is a nonfiction writer for the academic and popular press, hypnotherapist (ACHE) and multimedia artist. She is a participant, not just commentator. Her conspirituality work is an omni-sensory fusion of intelligence, science-art, new physics and emergent paradigm shift, melding many social issues into a new view of society. She is interested in the effects of doctrines from religion, science, psychology, and the arts. Website: http://ionamiller.weebly.com
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ALDRICH, T. E., ANDREWS, K. W. AND LIBOFF, A. R., 2001. Brain cancer risk and electromagnetic fields (EMFs): Assessing the geomagnetic component. Archives of Environmental Health, 56 (4) , 314-319
BARTSCH, H., BARTSCH, C., MECKE, D. AND LIPPERT, T. H., 1994. Seasonality of pineal melatonin production in the rat: Possible synchronization by the geomagnetic field. Chronobiology International, 11 (1), 21-26.
BELOV, D. R., KANUNIKOV, I. E. AND KISELEV B. V., 1998. Dependence of Human EEG spatial syncrhonization on the Geomagnetic Activity on the Day of Experiment. [article in Russian]. Ross Fiziol Zh Im I M Sechenova, 84 (8), 761-774.
BERGIANNAKI, J.-D., PAPARRIGOPOULOS, T. J. AND STEFANIS, C. N., 1996. Seasonal pattern of melatonin excretion inhumans: relationship to day length variation rate and geomagnetic field fluctuations. Experientia, 52, 253-258.
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DIMITROVA, S., STOILOVA, I. AND CHOLAKOV, I., 2004. Influence of local Geomagnetic Storms on Arterial Blood Pressure. Bioelectromagnetics, 25, 408-414.
FEIGIN, V. L., NIKITIN, YU, P. AND VINOGRADOVA, T. E., 1997. Solar and geomagnetic activities: Are there associations with stroke occurrence? Cerebrovascular Diseases, 7, 345-348.
GOLDWATER, P. N., 2003. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: a critical review of approaches to research. Arch. Dis. Child., 88: 1095-1100.
GORDON, C. AND BERK, M., 2003. The effect of geomagnetic storms on suicide. S Afr Psychiatry Rev 6, 24-27.
HSU, JEREMY, (2008), “Sloshing Inside Earth Changes Protective Magnetic Field” "There are these changes in the South Atlantic, an area where the magnetic field has the smallest envelope at one third [of what is] normal," said Mioara Mandea, a geophysicist at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. www.space.com/scienceastr...th-core.html
Jacobs, J. A., 1987. Geomagnetism Volumes 1, 2 and 3. Academic Press. [Volume 1: history of geomagnetism, instrumentation, overviews of main and crustal fields. Volume 2: origins of the Earth's magnetic field and that of the moon and other planets. Volume 3: rock magnetism, palaeomagnetism and the ancient magnetic field behaviour, conductivity structure of the Earth, indices of geomagnetic activity, magnetic field characteristics during solar quiet conditions.]
Jacobs, J. A., 1991. Geomagnetism Volume 4. Academic Press. [This volume covers the solar-terrestrial environment including the solar wind, the Earth's magnetosphere, magnetopause, magnetotail, ionosphere, pulsations, plasma waves, magnetospheric storms and sub-storms, auroras.]
KAY, R. W., 1994. Geomagnetic Storms: Association with Incidence of Depression as Measured by Hospital Admissions. Brit J Psychiatr, 164: 403-409.
KRIPPNER, STANLEY, “The Akashic Field and Psychic Dreams” - Persinger conducted an analysis of reports of telepathy and clairvoyance from a popular magazine. He found that these reported experiences were more likely to occur when the global geomagnetic activity was significantly quieter than the days before or the days after the experience. A day characterized by slow, predictable variations in the field is referred to as a "quiet" magnetic day. These were the days that were associated with reports of telepathy and clairvoyance (Persinger, 1985). About the same time, Marcia Adams (1986) studied the relationship between quiet magnetic days with success in clairvoyance experiments that had been conducted in another laboratory, finding a positive connection. A day of sudden and large field changes is referred to as a magnetically stormy day. Persinger noted a tendency for reports of poltergeist and haunting experiences to occur on these days (Persinger, 1989). Psychokinesis (in other words, anomalous effects on distant objects or activity) has been studied in the laboratory under psi task conditions. One analysis of these experiments has indicated a tendency for them to occur most frequently on magnetically stormy days (Braud & Dennis, 1989).
Krippner, Stanley, “Geomagnetic field effects and anomalous dreams”
Krippner, S., & Persinger, M. (1996). Evidence for enhanced congruence between dreams and distant target material during periods of decreased geomagnetic activity. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 10, 487 - 493.
Krippner, S., Vaughan, A., & Spottiswoode, S.J.P. (2000). Geomagnetic factors in subjective precognitive experiences. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 64, 109-118.
Lockman D (2002) Galvanizing ghosts: geomagnetic fields may be the culprit - Anomalous Experience
Merrill, R. T., M. W. McElhinny and P. L. McFadden, 1996. The Magnetic Field of the Earth. Academic Press. [This book is an introduction to geomagnetism suitable for those who are not familiar with the field, with an emphasis on internal fields and palaeomagnetism.]
Lonetree, Ben and Iona Miller (2004), “SIREN SONG OF THE EARTH: Investigating Vortex Theory & EM Signals with Ben Lonetree,” Nexus Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 2 Feb/Mar ’05, Int’l; Mar/Apr ‘05 North America. ionamiller2009.iwarp.com/whats...8.html
Miller, Iona and Richard Alan Miller (2003) "Schumann's Resonances and Human Psychobiology," NEXUS Magazine, Vol. 10; No. 3 (April-May, 2003).
Miller, Iona (2003), “Fear and Loathing in the Temporal Lobes,” neurotheology.50megs.com/whats...9.html
Mithen, Steven (2004). After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
Persinger, M.A. (1985). Geophysical variables and behavior: XXX. Intense paranormal activities occur during days of quite, global geomagnetic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61, 320 - 322.
Persinger, M.A. (1989). Psi phenomena and temporal lobe activity: The geomagnetic factor. In L.A. Henkel & R. Berger (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1988 (pp.121 - 156). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
Persinger, M.A., & Krippner, S. (1989). Dream ESP experiments and geomagnetic activity. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 83, 101 - 116.
Persinger, M.A. 1979. "Possible Infrequent Geophysical Sources of Close UFO Encounters: Expected Physical and Behavioral-Biological Effects." In R.F. Haines (Ed.), UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, pp. 396-434.
Persinger, M.A. 1983. The Effects of Transient or Intense Geomagnetic or Related Global Perturbation Upon Human Group Behavior." In J.B. Calhoun (Ed.), Perspectives on Adaptation, Environment and Population. New York: Praeger, pp. 28-30.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical models for parapsychological experiences. Psychoenergetic Systems, 1975, 1, 63-74.
Persinger, M.A. Transient geophysical bases for ostensible UFO-related phenomena and associated verbal behavior? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1976, 43, 215-221.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: III. Prediction of UFO reports by geomagnetic and seismic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1981, 53, 115-122.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: IV. UFO reports and fortean phenomena: temporal correlations in the central U.S.A. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1981, 53, 299-302.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior. VII. Prediction of recent European UFO report years by nineteenth century luminosity and solar-seismic variables. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1983, 56, 91-95.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior. VIII: Specific prediction of UFO reports within the New Madrid states by solar-geomagnetic and seismic measures. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1983, 56, 243-249.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior. IX: Expected clinical consequences of close proximity to UFO-related luminosities. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1983, 56, 259-265.
Persinger, M.A. The tectonic strain theory of luminosities (UFO reports): determining optimal temporal, spatial and intensity parameters. Pursuit, 1983, 1, 21-35.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and human behavior: XV. Tectonic strain luminosities (UFO reports) as predictable but hidden events within pre-1947 Central U.S.A. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1983, 57, 1227-1234.
Persinger, M.A. & Derr, J.S. Geophysical variables and behavior: XIX. Strong temporal relationships between inclusive seismic measures and UFO reports within Washington State. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1984, 59, 551-566.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and human behavior: XVIII. Expected perceptual characteristics and local distributions of close UFO reports. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1984, 58, 951-959.
Persinger, M.A., & Nolan, M. Geophysical variables and behavior: XX. Weekly numbers of mining accidents and the weather matrix: The importance of geomagnetic variation and barometric pressure. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1984, 59, 719-722.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: XXI. Geomagnetic variation as possible enhancement stimuli for UFO reports preceding earth tremors. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985, 60, 37-78.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: XXII. The tectonogenic strain continuum of unusual events. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985, 60, 59-65.
Persinger, M.A., & Derr, J.S. Geophysical variables and behavior: XXIII. Relations between UFO reports within the Uinta Basin and local seismicity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985, 60, 143-152.
Michaud, L.Y., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: XXV. Alterations in memory for a narrative following application of theta frequency electromagnetic fields. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985, 60, 416-418.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and human behavior: Intense paranormal experiences occur during days of quiet, global, geomagnetic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985, 61, 320-322.
Gearhart, L., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and human behavior. Onsets of historical and contemporary poltergeist episodes occurred with sudden increases in geomagnetic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1986, 62, 463-466.
Mattsson, D., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: positive correlations between numbers of UFO reports and earthquake activity in Sweden. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1986, 63, 921-922.
Persinger, M.A. Geopsychology and geopsychopathology: mental processes and disorders associated with geochemical and geophysical factors. Experientia, 1987, 43, 92-104.
Lewicki, D.R., Schaut, G.H., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: XLIV. Days of subjective precognitive experiences and the days before the actual events display correlated geomagnetic activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1987, 65, 173-174.
Persinger, M.A., & Schaut, G.B. Geomagnetic factors in subjective telepathic, precognitive and postmortem experiences. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1988, 82, 217-235.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: L. Indications of a tectonic strain factor in the Rutledge (UFO) observations during 1973 in Southeastern Missouri. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1988, 67, 571-575.
Arango, M.A., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: LII. Decreased geomagnetic activity and spontaneous telepathic experiences from the Sidgwick collection. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1988, 67, 907-910.
Persinger, M.A. Increased geomagnetic activity and the occurrence of bereavement hallucinations: Evidence for melatonin-mediated micro-seizuring in the temporal lobe? Neuroscience Letters, 1988, 88, 271-274.
Derr, J.S., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: LIV. Zeitoun (Egypt) apparitions of the Virgin Mary as tectonic strain-induced luminosities. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1989, 68, 123-128.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: LV. Predicting the details of visitor experiences and the personality of experients: The temporal lobe factor. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1989, 68, 55-65.
Persinger, M.A., & Krippner, S. Experimental dream telepathy, clairvoyance and geomagnetic activity. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1989, 83, 101-116.
Persinger, M.A. The tectonic strain theory as an explanation for UFO phenomena: A non-technical review of the research, 1970_1990. Journal of UFO Studies, 1990, 2, 105-137.
Persinger, M.A., & Derr, J.S. Geophysical variables and behavior: LXII. Temporal coupling of UFO reports and seismic energy release within the Rio Grande rift system: discriminative validity of the tectonic strain theory. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1990, 71, 567-572.
Derr, J.S., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: LXIII. Quasi-experimental evidence of the tectonic strain theory of luminous phenomena: the Derby, Colorado earthquakes. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1990, 71, 707-714.
Berger, R.E., & Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: LXVII. Quieter annual geomagnetic activity and larger effect size for experimental PSI (ESP) studies over six decades. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1991, 73, 1219-1223.
Richards, P. M., Persinger, M. A. & Koren, S. A. (1993). Modification of activation and evaluation properties of narratives by weak complex magnetic field patterns that simulate limbic burst firing. International Journal of Neuroscience, 71, 71-85.
Persinger, M.A. Geophysical variables and behavior: LXVI. Geomagnetic storm sudden commencements and commercial aircrashes. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1991, 72, 476-478.
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Roffey Line, Leane, Outline of Biological Magnetohydrodynamics, WÅ‚odzimierz Sedlak, Ph.D., translated by Leane Roffey Line, Ph.D. and Jaroslaw Kempczynski, Ph.D. http://www.emergentmind.org/Sedlak06.htm
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Geomagnetism Geoscience Australia maintains a national network of geomagnetic observatories, which are part of a global network. It aims to 'promote public safety through the provision of compass and magnetometer calibration information, and help mitigate the potential hazardous effects of magnetic storms on radio and satellite communications, radar, global positioning system (GPS), spacecraft, powerlines and pipelines'. Geoscience Australia's geomagnetism site provides geomagnetism data, information and reports. It includes Australian geomagnetic reference field values, minute values, geomagnetic indices, real time magnetograms from the Canberra observatory, and the Australian Geomagnetism Report (PDF format, Adobe Reader required).
www.ga.gov.au/geomag/index.jsp
USGS GEOMAG Realtime Readings - geomag.usgs.gov/realtime/
Because the Earth’s magnetic field is complicated in space and time, because it has such a variety of causes and affects, and because it is of both scientific interest and practical importance, the USGS Geomagnetism Program has, for over a century, monitored the field through a network of magnetic observatories and conducted scientific analysis on those data.
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©2009 Iona Miller is a nonfiction writer for the academic and popular press, hypnotherapist (ACHE) and multimedia artist. She is a participant, not just commentator. Her conspirituality work is an omni-sensory fusion of intelligence, science-art, new physics and emergent paradigm shift, melding many social issues into a new view of society. She is interested in the effects of doctrines from religion, science, psychology, and the arts. Website: http://ionamiller.weebly.com
Magnetic Storms
Magnetic Storm PBS Airdate: November 18, 2003
Go to the companion Web site
NARRATOR: There's a region of our planet that no human being has ever visited. No one has ever seen this place, yet what happens here affects every one of us every day of our lives. It's 2,000 miles beneath our feet, the Earth's molten core. Here a vast ocean of liquid iron generates an invisible force, the Earth's magnetic field. It's what makes our compasses point north. But it does a lot more: it helps to keep the Earth a living planet. Our neighbors, Venus and Mars, have only weak magnetic fields, which means they're unprotected from the deadly radiation sweeping through the solar system. The Earth, on the other hand, exists within a vast magnetic cocoon, a force-field that for billions of years has sheltered us on our journey through space.
But now scientists have made a startling discovery. It seems there's a storm brewing deep within the Earth, a storm that is weakening our vital magnetic shield.
PETER OLSON (Johns Hopkins University): The Earth's magnetic field has been our protector for millennia, and now, it appears, it's about to go away.
JOHN SHAW (University of Liverpool): The Earth's magnet field is getting weaker rapidly.
MARIO ACUNA (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center): We cannot guarantee that the magnetic field of the Earth is still going to be there a thousand years from today.
NARRATOR: Is our invisible shield about to disappear?
JEREMY BLOXHAM (Harvard University): The question is not if that's going to happen, it's when that's going to happen.
NARRATOR: Could the Earth really lose its magnetic field? And what will happen if it does? Up next on NOVA: Magnetic Storm.
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NARRATOR: Searing heat, crushing pressure, and a billion trillion tons of molten iron: these are the conditions at the center of the earth.
PETER OLSON: This is the Sparrow's Point blast furnace for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and this is as close to the environment of the Earth's core as we have here on the surface of the Earth.
NARRATOR: Buried beneath nearly 2,000 miles of solid rock, the earth's core is inaccessible to geophysicists like Peter Olson.
PETER OLSON: About half way to the center of the Earth we reach the true heart of the Earth, the Earth's core, an immense molten sphere of liquid iron, and that's where the Earth's magnetic field is generated.
NARRATOR: But recently, scientists have detected a dramatic change in the Earth's magnetic field. The core's ability to generate the field seems to be faltering.
PETER OLSON: Today something very strange is going on with the Earth's magnetic field: its strength is rapidly decreasing, so fast that at the current rate it will last only into the next millennium.
NARRATOR: It seems the Earth's magnetic field is rapidly fading, a puzzle that is challenging scientists around the globe.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: It's quite surprising how little is understood about the Earth's magnetic field and how it's generated.
GARY GLATZMAIER (University of California, Santa Cruz): It was a very intriguing problem, something that was screaming out for an answer.
DANIEL LATHROP (University of Maryland): I often wished I could see the magnetic field. I'm motivated by the mysteries that are there.
NARRATOR: As scientists grapple with the complexities of the magnetic field, they realize that what is happening at the center of the Earth could change our world for generations to come.
Magnetism is something we're all familiar with. Its seemingly magical ability to attract and repel, delights and baffles. But this mysterious force is not just a curiosity. Magnetism, a close relative of electricity, lies at the heart of most modern technology, everything from power stations to the television you're watching now.
And, in fact, the Earth itself is a gigantic magnet. While we are constantly aware of the pull of gravity, most of the time we are oblivious to the other force the earth generates, the magnetic field. But, space scientists like Andrew Coates know how important it really is.
ANDREW COATES (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London): The magnetic field's extent is really huge. It's the biggest thing really we have on Earth.
NARRATOR: The magnetic field is created deep in the Earth's core. It streams out near the South Pole, loops around the planet, and then runs back into the core near the north magnetic pole. This is the Earth's protective force field. Without it, we'd be in trouble.
ANDREW COATES: It protects us against radiation from space. It's a little bit like being in the pod here. This shields us from the weather on Earth; the magnetic field of the Earth shields us from space weather and space radiation.
NARRATOR: Space weather is nasty. The winds that blow through the galaxy are winds of radiation, some of the most harmful from distant exploding stars.
ANDREW COATES: But there is another source which is much nearer, which is our sun. The sun itself is a thermonuclear furnace, and this flings off huge amounts of dangerous material in very large explosions. In some cases, it's about the same mass as Mount Everest actually coming towards us.
NARRATOR: Every few hours the sun ejects billions of tons of electrically charged particles, the solar wind. Often the Earth lies directly in the path of this onslaught. But magnetism deflects charged particles. This means that the solar wind is unable to penetrate the Earth's magnetic shield, and so flows harmlessly around the planet.
The only visible signs of this drama far above our heads are the Northern and Southern Lights, produced when solar particles trapped in the Earth's magnetic field are dragged through the atmosphere towards the poles.
ANDREW COATES: Now we're lucky on the Earth, we have the magnetic field which deflects the particles and protects us. But if we lost the magnetic field, there would be nothing to stop the radiation bathing the whole of the atmosphere, and the effect would be much more dangerous.
NARRATOR: But just how dangerous? What would be the ultimate consequences for planet Earth if the magnetic field were to disappear altogether?
ACTUALITY (NASA Mission Control countdown): . . . five, four, three, two, one.
NARRATOR: The answer has become clear only recently.
ACTUALITY (NASA Mission Control): . . . and we have lift off of NASA's Mars Global Surveyor as America begins its journey back to the Red Planet.
NARRATOR: In 1996, NASA sent a satellite to Mars.
MARIO ACUNA: Mars has been a difficult planet to get to with spacecraft. Even after 16 missions by U.S. and Russia and so on, we still did not know whether Mars had an intrinsic magnetic field or not.
NARRATOR: It was this long-standing question which Mario Acuna and his team from NASA hoped finally to settle. What they actually uncovered was considerably more significant.
MARIO ACUNA: Nature had big surprises for us, beyond our wildest expectations.
NARRATOR: Hidden in the history of Mars lay the connection between magnetism and life.
MARIO ACUNA: And here is where we develop our expensive toys, our instruments. This is our lab.
NARRATOR: Mario is one of the world's leading experts on extra-terrestrial magnetic fields. He has sent instruments to measure them all over the solar system.
MARIO ACUNA: This one went to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond. This is Voyager 1 and 2. This one went to Mercury with Mariner 10. This one went around the orbit and the Sun. This one went to Comet Halley, for example.
NARRATOR: To measure magnetic fields, Mario uses a technique which was discovered a century and a half ago.
MARIO ACUNA: The simplest way to measure a magnetic field is with a little magnet, like we have here, that has been mounted in such a way that it can move freely in three dimensions. And this magnet, because a magnetic field is a force field, will align itself with the Earth's magnetic field. In this case, in this direction that we have here, which is actually going into the core at an angle of 70 degrees here and pointing North. So that gives us an idea of the direction of the field.
And you can see that if I perturb this magnet just slightly, how fast it recovers the original position gives us indication of the strength of the magnetic field. So it's very weak for the Earth. And if I use a strong permanent magnet, then we see that our test magnet moves much faster. So if I make this magnet work against a spring, I get an idea not only of the direction of the field, but also how strong it is.
NARRATOR: In the Mars Global Surveyor satellite, the instruments are electronic rather than mechanical, but the principle remains the same, a tiny electromagnet which works against a magnetic spring.
MARIO ACUNA: So here is my spring, here's my magnet, and if I pass an electrical current through my spring and measure the disturbance of my magnet, which is inside, then I can transmit back to Earth the information about the strength and the direction of the field we are trying to measure.
NARRATOR: As Mars Global Surveyor started to send back data, it soon became clear to Mario and the team that today Mars has no overall magnetic field. But the satellite also detected signs indicating that that had not always been the case.
MARIO ACUNA: We found these huge magnetic fields in the crust, and all of a sudden a completely unexpected and unknown planet, in a sense, emerged.
NARRATOR: Although there was no magnetism coming from the core of Mars, strangely, large areas of the surface were strongly magnetic.
The Martian crust is mainly made of frozen lava, a remnant of the time when Mars was covered with volcanoes, and there is a way volcanic rocks can get magnetized when they form. If molten rock cools in a strong magnetic field, iron-based minerals in it can pick up that magnetism, and the resulting solid rock will itself be magnetic.
So the fact that there was magnetism in the Martian crust proved that when the lava first erupted, Mars must have had a global magnetic field.
MARIO ACUNA: ...and not only that, at an intensity which is 20 to 30 times that of the Earth.
NARRATOR: Mario's team now knew that Mars had once had a magnetic shield which it must at some point have lost. They began to wonder whether this might be the solution to one of the great mysteries of the solar system.
Scientists suspect that the young Mars was in many ways an Earth-like place, with a thick atmosphere and oceans which may have harbored primitive life. But then, around 4,000,000,000 years ago, the planet entered a catastrophic decline. Gradually the atmosphere and oceans of Mars mysteriously disappeared.
MARIO ACUNA: The puzzle was, where did the water go? What process could have caused the loss of water?
NARRATOR: Mario realized that two dramatic events in the early history of Mars might lead him to the answer.
MARIO ACUNA: We found two very large impact basins in the southern hemisphere of Mars, which are Hellas and Argyre. There was absolutely no magnetization over them.
NARRATOR: In these basins, formed when two huge meteorites hit Mars, the rocks were strikingly free of magnetism. And that was odd, because the huge impacts must have melted the crust, and as it cooled again, the rocks should have become magnetized by the strong Martian magnetic field. Yet there was no trace of magnetism in Hellas and Argyre.
MARIO ACUNA: Which immediately meant that they were formed after the magnetic field of Mars had ceased to exist, and the estimate is that these impacts took place more than 4,000,000,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: Four billion years ago is when Mars was beginning to lose its water and atmosphere. Though not all scientists agree with him, Mario is convinced that the timing is not just a coincidence.
MARIO ACUNA: If we shut down the magnetic field, then the solar wind has direct access to the atmosphere of Mars. Then we have a process which is equivalent to the erosion in the desert. The wind blows and it blows the sand away. In this case, the sands are atmospheric particles. Slowly but surely, the atmospheric gases, which includes water, are carried away and are lost to Mars.
NARRATOR: The loss of its magnetic shield could well have meant death for the Red Planet. Exposed to the wind of radiation from the sun over millions of years, its atmosphere was gradually blown away, leaving the sterile world we see today.
MARIO ACUNA: If we were to turn off the Earth's magnetic field, the same process would occur. The atmosphere of Earth would be exposed to the erosional effects of the solar wind, and it would be slowly carried away.
NARRATOR: The fate of Mars suggests that without the protection of its magnetic shield, the Earth could also become a dead planet, which makes it all the more disturbing to learn that our own magnetic field is fading so rapidly.
Evidence of that decline has come from a surprising source. People have been making pottery for thousands of years. Archaeologists study pots to learn about ancient cultures. But these vessels have another story to tell.
JOHN SHAW: Pottery acts just like a magnetic tape recorder. It records the Earth's magnetic field when the pottery is first made.
NARRATOR: An ancient pot is a magnetic time capsule. John Shaw has learned how to extract from it a precise measurement of the strength of the magnetic field as it was in antiquity.
Like volcanic rock, clay contains tiny pieces of an iron-based mineral called magnetite. At the microscopic level, magnetite contains lots of distinct magnetic regions, in effect, tiny magnets. But in raw clay, these microscopic magnets all point in different directions, so they fail to create an overall magnetic field. That means a lump of clay on the potter's wheel is not, itself, magnetic. Not yet, anyway.
JOHN SHAW: Now the interesting part is when the pot's fired.
NARRATOR: The intense heat in the kiln erases all the magnetic regions. But as the pot begins to cool, new magnetic regions form in the magnetite. And as the regions reform, they align with the Earth's magnetic field, just like compass needles. With millions of tiny magnets all pointing in the same general direction, the pot itself becomes slightly magnetic. Once it has cooled, the magnetism is locked in.
JOHN SHAW: So if we take an ancient pot like this one, which is from Peru, when it cooled for the first time, it cooled in the Earth's ancient magnetic field and it became magnetized in that field. And of course, if the field's very strong, then the pot's strongly magnetized, and if the field's very weak, then the pot's weakly magnetized.
NARRATOR: By examining pottery from prehistory to modern times, John has discovered just how dramatically the field has changed in the last few centuries.
JOHN SHAW: When we plot the results from the ceramics, this is what we see: gentle changes as we come forward in time over twelve thousand years—a gentle rise—and then a rapid fall, as we come towards the present day. The rate of change is higher over the last three hundred years than it has been for any time in the past five thousand. It's going from a strong field down to a weak field, and it's doing it very quickly.
NARRATOR: In three hundred years the field has fallen 10 percent. And the rate of decline is increasing. In just a few centuries it could be gone altogether. So is the Earth going the way of Mars? There's only one place to look for an answer, the inaccessible region where the field is generated, the Earth's core.
But with no way to get to the core, Professor Dan Lathrop is playing with fire, as he and his students try to build it in their lab. They want to find out just what keeps the magnetic field going, and what might cause it to disappear. They model the liquid metal core with sodium, because it's highly conductive and much easier to melt than iron.
DANIEL LATHROP: Sodium, actually, at room temperature is really a very soft metal, sort of cheesy. Of course, when we heat it up to around the boiling point of water then it becomes liquid, and that's when we actually run the experiments. But it certainly is a hazard in the lab. If we put sodium down in some water, you get little explosions and burning coming off of it.
WOODROW SHEW (University of Maryland): What you're looking at here is a sphere which contains about 110 kilograms of sodium. When we run an experiment, we'll start spinning this ball like the Earth is spinning, and make measurements of the magnetic field that it generates on its own.
NARRATOR: What they're trying to create is a self-sustaining electro-magnetic dynamo, because that's what they think the Earth is. Scientists have a theory about how the core generates the magnetic field. It's based on the close relationship of magnetism to electricity. In particular, the fact that electric currents create magnetic fields.
DANIEL LATHROP: So there's no electric current going through the coil to start with, the iron fillings just go down like pepper in a pan, but if I turn on the electric current, then you can see the iron filings line up with the magnetic field that's produced by the current in this electric coil. So it's really currents inside the Earth's liquid metal core that we think gives rise to the magnetic field.
NARRATOR: But what gives rise to the electric currents? The answer to that is where things get complicated. Scientists believe that just as the electric currents produce the magnetic field, so the magnetic field produces the electric currents. The key is that the liquid metal in the core is in constant motion.
DANIEL LATHROP: If you take a moving conductor in the presence of a magnetic field, currents get set up inside the conductor.
NARRATOR: In the Earth, the moving conductor is a billion trillion tons of molten iron, but the effect can be seen in a simple loop of wire, connected only to a meter which measures electric currents.
DANIEL LATHROP: If I move this conductor in the presence of the Earth's magnetic field then that gives rise to currents. Once you have currents, those give rise to magnetic fields. So it's kind of a curious loop that gets set up in the Earth's core. A little bit of magnetic field coupled in to the motion of the liquid gives rise to currents flowing in the core. Those currents cause more magnetic field, which cause more currents, more magnetic field. So it's kind of a feed-back loop that can cause the magnetic field to just rise.
NARRATOR: If it works in the Earth's core, it should work in the lab. Scientists are not quite sure what got the Earth's dynamo started; it may have been stray magnetic fields from the Sun. But to get a small-scale version going, Dan uses a powerful magnet.
DANIEL LATHROP: We apply a large magnetic field on the sodium flow inside the sphere, and you can get a feel for how strong the magnetic field is. Dan, turn on the magnets. We can actually see how they attract this chain quite strongly—wipe out any bad credit cards you might have in a hurry.
NARRATOR: If the electro-magnetic dynamo theory is right, then the field generated by their miniature core will be stronger than the field they started with, the magnetism rapidly growing by drawing energy from the motion of the liquid sodium conductor. It's something they haven't yet achieved, but already they have revealed a crucial clue to what might cause a planet's magnetic field to fail.
DANIEL LATHROP: Well, the different experiments that have been run have shown that moving liquid metal is critical to getting the magnetic field to arise.
NARRATOR: So if the core were ever to cool to the point where the liquid iron solidified and stopped moving, the dynamo would shut down. This may be why Mars lost its magnetic field so early in its history.
DANIEL LATHROP: Because Mars is a smaller planet, it will have cooled more quickly than the Earth. So there's a very good chance that Mars has simply become too cold to sustain an active dynamo. It could be that the liquid metal core just froze out at some point.
NARRATOR: But will what happened to Mars eventually happen to the Earth?
PETER OLSON: The Earth's core is very slowly cooling at the rate of perhaps 100 degrees per billion years, so eventually the whole of the core will freeze. At that point the dynamo will die.
NARRATOR: But scientists calculate that the cooling of the Earth's core is so slow that that point lies billions of years in the future.
PETER OLSON: The Earth's magnetic field has been around for a long time, at least two billion years. It has lasted so long because it has a very large energy source in the original heat that the Earth's core inherited when it was formed. So the Earth can sustain the magnetic field for billions and billions of years of time.
NARRATOR: What's more, the history of the field's decline revealed by the pottery record just doesn't fit the idea that the Earth's internal dynamo is shutting down. Surprisingly, the Earth's field is fading too quickly.
MARIO ACUNA: If we were to shut down the heat flux in the Earth, it would take hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions of years, for the field to decrease. And that's not what we see. We see a field decrease which is much faster than that, so there is something else going on in the case of the Earth.
NARRATOR: But what? Searching for clues to what's happening deep inside our planet, scientists have turned their attention to a chain of volcanic islands in the middle of the Pacific. Here, there's a record of the earth's magnetic field that stretches back millions of years, a record, not of gradual decline, but of a series of spectacular magnetic upheavals.
On the big island of Hawaii, some of the heat that drives the Earth's dynamo finds its way to the surface. For several years now, Mt. Kilauea has been continuously erupting. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey need to sample the lava to keep an eye on the volcano.
MIKE FULLER (University of Hawaii): It solidifies pretty fast, as you can see.
NARRATOR: But geophysicist Mike Fuller is interested in the lava for another reason, what it tells him about the earth's magnetic field. It all begins when the lava hits the sea.
MIKE FULLER: You can see the lava's having moved down from the volcano up here, sometimes in tubes, mostly in tubes. Now we're beginning to see it come out and go into the water and form the very newest bit of the island chain of Hawaii. As this lava hits the seawater, of course, it really chills very, very fast. And a very wonderful thing happens. They actually trap in...they record the Earth's magnetic field.
NARRATOR: As they solidify and cool, these volcanic rocks are preserving a record of today's magnetic field. But the volcanoes of Hawaii have been erupting, on and off, for millions of years, building up the islands. Every layer of lava contains a record of the magnetic field at the time of that eruption. So the Hawaiian archipelago is a hidden chronicle of the Earth's magnetism stretching back five and a half million years. That record shows there have been many fluctuations in the field's strength, but it contains something else of great significance.
When lava cools—as with pottery—magnetic regions form within it. Acting like microscopic compass needles, they record not only how strong the field is, but also in what direction it is pointing.
Today the Earth's magnetic field runs from south to north—which is why compass needles point towards the North Pole—and recent lava flows record a field pointing north.
But 50 years ago, when scientists measured the magnetism trapped in older lava samples, they made a startling discovery: the microscopic magnets within the lava were all pointing south.
MIKE FULLER: When we go back about 780,000 years we find an incredible phenomenon. Suddenly the rocks are magnetized backwards. Instead of them being magnetized to the north like today's field, they are magnetized to the south.
NARRATOR: It seemed that prior to 780,000 years ago, Hawaiian lava must have cooled within a global magnetic field that was running to the south and away from the north, exactly the reverse of today. The bizarre implication was that at some point the entire global magnetic field had done a sudden 180-degree flip, completely reversing direction.
MIKE FULLER: It was hard for people to accept. They did not like the idea that the field reversed. It took about 50 years to convince people of this, but eventually that was established, and really by work on this island, because if you keep on going down you would find that after about another couple of hundred thousand years, then it changes again. And you see this sequence going on.
NARRATOR: And as they examined samples from older and older lava, scientists found more and more reversals—on average, one every 200,000 years.
MIKE FULLER: And so, by the time people had done that, it was pretty obvious that the field did indeed reverse.
NARRATOR: But if the field has reversed so often in the past, it must surely do so again in the future.
MIKE FULLER: That the Earth's magnetic field reverses is an extraordinary phenomenon, but this reversal process is quite common. The last reversal was what, 780,000 years ago? Before that, there was one about 200,000, before that, again, actually less than 200, so in a sense we are a bit overdue for a reversal.
NARRATOR: So is this why the field is getting weaker today? Could it be getting ready to flip? Scientists needed to discover whether there was a link between changes in the strength of the magnetic field, and changes in its direction.
GARY GLATZMAIER: It was a very intriguing problem, something that was screaming out for an answer. And computers were becoming powerful enough to actually solve a full set of equations that describe convection in the core of the Earth and how that motion generates a magnetic field.
NARRATOR: In the 1990s, physicist Gary Glatzmaier decided to embark on a very ambitious experiment. He put all the essential facts that scientists had learned about the Earth's molten core into a computer model: dozens of equations describing its dimensions, temperature, viscosity and so forth. Then he let the model run to see how the magnetic field would evolve over hundreds of thousands of years of simulated time.
GARY GLATZMAIER: It's important to understand just how long these simulations take. Each time the computer solves the equations it advances the whole solution one time step, and a time step is typically ten days. And within ten days things don't change much, which means you have to do many, many solutions. You have to solve it millions of times, tens of millions of times, in order to be able to simulate hundreds of thousands of years, which is what we needed. One case may take six months of running on the fastest computers in the world.
I was using supercomputers from the Department of Energy, from NASA and the National Science Foundation, and no matter where I was, the first thing I'd do is make sure the computers didn't crash. So it was something I did every day, seven days a week for over four years.
And I remember there was a period of time, I believe it was in the fall, and I was traveling to other universities and giving talks, and after a number of weeks I came back and decided, "Well, now I need to look at the details of the magnetic field." And realized that it was in the reverse polarity! It really had reversed. This is something I didn't expect.
So then I looked at many snapshots during the time I was gone and realized that the field did indeed reverse spontaneously. This was the first time it happened. We were very anxious to write about it. It was really exciting!
NARRATOR: And as the experiment continued, so did the reversals, every hundred thousand years or so of simulated time. And crucially, each time the field reversed, the process began the same way.
GARY GLATZMAIER: What's interesting is whenever it has reversed its polarity, its direction, that happened when the magnetic intensity was very weak. So it was decreasing and decreasing and finally when the dipole part of the field was very weak, then the field reversed.
NARRATOR: Here was the evidence that what we are seeing today, a loss of field strength, is indeed linked to the onset of reversals. What's more, Gary could see why reversals are heralded by a weakening field.
GARY GLATZMAIER: Now this movie will show part of a simulation that spans a magnetic field reversal. What you see here as blue represents inward directed magnetic field, and the gold represents outward directed magnetic field.
NARRATOR: In Gary's model, reversals seem to start with the appearance of islands of blue in the gold, and vice versa. These are magnetic anomalies, regions of the core where the field is already flowing the wrong way. As they grow, these patches where the field is reversed start to cancel out the main field, making it weaker and more liable to flip.
GARY GLATZMAIER: You see, as the time goes on, the field becomes more and more complicated. And then you get an anomaly growing in the northern hemisphere, where the magnetic field now is going out. There is a reversal. Now the magnetic field is outward in the northern hemisphere and inward in the southern hemisphere.
NARRATOR: So now the burning question is, "Is what's happening in Gary's model reflected in the real Earth?" Is the 300-year decline in our field which the pottery reveals, the work of magnetic anomalies brewing deep in the core beneath our feet? If so, then a reversal really could be in the cards.
Amazingly, there are detailed records that cover exactly this 300 year period: the log books of Her Majesty's Navy. For as geophysicist Jeremy Bloxham has discovered, eighteenth and nineteenth century sailors were obsessed with the magnetic field.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: Back in the days of James Cook, when he was doing his voyages of exploration, a compass was the primary means of navigation. However, a compass needle doesn't point at true north, at the real geographical North Pole, instead it points at magnetic north.
NARRATOR: For sailors, knowing the difference between true north and magnetic north was a matter of life and death. But as they were well aware, magnetic north keeps moving, wandering about near the pole as the field gradually changes. So navigators needed to measure the difference between magnetic north and true north, the angle of variation. They did this by comparing their compass bearing to an astronomical calculation of true north.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: The trick was to find true north, and they could do this by looking at the sun at noon, when it's highest in the sky, alternatively by measuring the angle the sun made at sunrise or sunset. Here, on the 8th of June, 1770, we have a magnetic variation of 4 degrees, 53 minutes east.
NARRATOR: Thousands of these observations, together with early measures of the local strength of the field, have enabled Jeremy to reconstruct the ebb and flow of the Earth's magnetism over the past three centuries. And it's what this reveals about one region in particular that's significant.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: We've seen very abrupt changes in the Earth's magnetic field beneath the South Atlantic Ocean.
NARRATOR: Beneath the South Atlantic, Jeremy has found clear evidence for a region of magnetic anomalies, places were the field has already started to reverse. And these anomalies are growing.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: As we get into the beginning of the 20th century, we see the emergence of a new patch of reverse flux, a region where the field lines, instead of coming out of the core, are looping back into the core. And that patch then drifts towards the west, hooking up with this other patch of reverse flux to create a large region of what we call the "South Atlantic anomaly," where the field is about 30 percent weaker. And that patch has grown substantially during the last hundred years in particular. So one question we're all asking ourselves at the moment is, "Is the Earth's magnetic field about to flip?"
NARRATOR: In a region of the core 2,000 miles beneath the South Atlantic, the magnetic currents have reversed direction, canceling out the main field, causing its strength to decline. If things continue like this, then we could experience a magnetic phenomenon the Earth has not seen for 780,000 years, a complete flip of the entire global field.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: There's really no question about whether the Earth's magnetic field will reverse again. The question is not, if that's going to happen, it's when that's going to happen.
GARY GLATZMAIER: Actually, in the last few hundred years, the intensity of the magnetic field on the Earth has been decreasing, which is an indication that maybe we're in for a reversal. The average time between reversals is on the order of a few hundred thousand years. We're actually sort of due for one.
NARRATOR: No one has ever experienced a magnetic reversal. If this is really the beginning of a flip, what exactly will happen next?
One man who may know, is geologist Rob Coe. For 25 years, he's been coming to Steens Mountain in Oregon, a vast heap of hundreds of ancient lava flows.
ROB COE (University of California, Santa Cruz): Sixteen million years ago there was a huge series of eruptions here. You can pick out literally hundreds of lava flows over on that wall. Each line delineates a different lava flow. It's over 3,000 feet of overlying flows.
NARRATOR: What makes Steens special, is that 16 million years ago, when this lava was erupted, the magnetic field was in the middle of a flip. Taking samples from dozens of flows all the way up the mountain, Rob and his colleagues have pieced together a detailed record of this magnetic reversal, although it's so surprising that not everyone accepts it.
ROB COE: What we found as it started to reverse was the strength of the Earth's field decreased dramatically, by 80 or 90 percent.
NARRATOR: The field started out pointing south, but as it weakened the direction of the field began to change erratically. After 300 years, it had swung a full 180 degrees to point north, and the field strength started to recover.
ROB COE: But it couldn't hold that polarity, and it fell back to...reversed and the intensity crashed again.
NARRATOR: Once more the Earth's magnetic shield practically disappeared, this time for 3,000 years. What was left was changing so fast that Rob found a flow that captured these wild gyrations even as the lava cooled.
ROB COE: And what we found was even harder to believe. The quickly chilled margins in the bottom and the top had one direction, like that of the underlying flow, and the middle portion had a direction that was sixty degrees farther away. It was just as though, while the flow cooled, the field had moved sixty degrees, which if you calculate it out, that comes to about six degrees of movement per day. If we were observing this with a compass, you would be able almost to see the motion with your eye. It was truly astonishing and extraordinary.
NARRATOR: The lava layers of Steens Mountain suggest we could be in for magnetic chaos, with magnetic north changing from day to day. More seriously, for perhaps thousands of years, the Earth's magnetic shield will be weakened, something that will affect every person on the planet.
GARY GLATZMAIER: The intensity of the magnetic field will be weaker, maybe ten, maybe a hundred times weaker than it is today, which means that more cosmic radiation will get through.
ANDREW COATES: This basically opens our defenses so that solar and galactic radiation can hit the atmosphere directly. And this means that the radiation at ground level increases as well.
NARRATOR: One estimate is that our overall exposure to cosmic radiation will double. And in some places it could be even worse.
Today, the magnetic field focuses space radiation towards the far north and south where few people live. But as the main field collapses, the weak field that's left will have a more complex structure. Instead of just two magnetic poles, there may be four or even eight, slowly moving across the Earth's surface.
GARY GLATZMAIER: The structure of the magnetic field won't be the nice, smooth, simple dipole structure that we have today, which tends to deflect charged particles—cosmic radiation—to the poles of the Earth. Instead there will be several poles all around the Earth, maybe close to the equator. And so, not only will the, the field be weaker, the field will tend to focus cosmic radiation at low latitudes where most people live.
ANDREW COATES: This unfortunately means more deaths from cancer. It's roughly 15 per million people per year. That is the amount of deaths we're talking about. And if you multiply that over the whole population of the Earth, that becomes a significant number.
NARRATOR: It's impossible to know for sure, but the best guess is that every year a hundred thousand people would die from the increased levels of space radiation. But of course this would still represent only a relatively small increase in the overall incidence of cancer.
GARY GLATZMAIER: So it's not going to be catastrophic. It'll be something to be concerned about, but it won't be a catastrophic event. And certainly by the time it happens, civilization will have figured out how to deal with it.
MARIO ACUNA: The field will come back. In the case of Mars we know that the field will not come back, and it has been gone for billions of years, so the effect has been very, very serious on the Mars atmosphere. But on the Earth's atmosphere just a few thousand years of no magnetic field are not expected to result in a very large stripping of the atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Scientists now know that the magnetic reversal that is inevitably coming will have serious consequences for our descendents, but it won't be a disaster for planet Earth. And as our children's children's children wait for north to become south, they may find that a world without a strong magnetic field has its compensations.
ANDREW COATES: The great thing is that it would be possible to see the aurora just about every night all over the Earth. So London, behind me, for example, we might be able to see great aurora just about every night of the year, shimmering and moving in the sky as the solar wind hits the atmosphere directly, and it glows like a neon light.
GARY GLATZMAIER: Aurora will be very exciting. I can imagine a very exciting, very interesting dynamic magnetic field outside of the Earth during the next reversal.
MIKE FULLER: I would love to see a reversal happening, but it would involve me living rather longer than I plan to. But that would be very nice. In fact it's one of the great tragedies of life, we never see how these things work out!
ROB COE: I'd really like to know how it does it and why it does it. And when will it do it again?
None of us will be around for the next magnetic reversal. But on NOVA's Website, get a sneak preview of what the night sky will look like when it happens. Find it on PBS.org.
Educators can order this, or any other NOVA program, for $19.95 plus shipping and handling. Call WGBH Boston Video at 1-800-255-9424 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-800-255-9424 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
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PRODUCTION CREDITS Magnetic Storm
Written and Produced by
David Sington
Directed by
Duncan Copp
Associate Producer
Sarah Kinsella
Edited by
Christy Hanna
Narrated by
Gene Galusha
Camera
Nigel Meakin
Clive North
Hugh Hood
Paul Atkins
Sound Recordists
John Pritchard
Kevin Meredith
Chris Wright
Grace Niska Atkins
Assistant Camera
Peter Meakin
Music
Judith Edelman
Recorded and Mixed By
James Rubin at Random Recording, Nashville
Animation
Gareth Edwards
Production Manager
Selina Kay
Online Editor and Colorist
Mike Curd
Audio Mix
Danny Finn
Archival Material
NASA
Special Thanks
British Airways London Eye
Bethlehem Steel Corporation
Emilio Herrero
Christina Heliker, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
Kevin Millward, Gladstone Pottery Museum
Cathy and Ken Lohmann
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
National Maritime Museum, London
Natural History Museum, London
Public Record Office, London
NOVA Series Graphics
National Ministry of Design
NOVA Theme
Mason Daring
Martin Brody
Michael Whalen
Post Production Online Editor
Mark Steele
Closed Captioning
The Caption Center
NOVA Administrator
Queene Coyne
Publicity
Jonathan Renes
Diane Buxton
Tom Stebbins
Senior Researcher
Ethan Herberman
Production Coordinator
Linda Callahan
Unit Managers
Holly Archibald
Lola Norman-Salako
Paralegal
Nancy Marshall
Legal Counsel
Susan Rosen Shishko
Post Production Assistant
Patrick Carey
Associate Producer, Post Production
Nathan Gunner
Post Production Supervisor
Regina O'Toole
Post Production Editor
Rebecca Nieto
Post Production Manager
Maureen Barden Lynch
Supervising Producer
Stephen Sweigart
Producer, Special Projects
Susanne Simpson
Coordinating Producer
Laurie Cahalane
Senior Science Editor
Evan Hadingham
Senior Series Producer
Melanie Wallace
Managing Director
Alan Ritsko
Senior Executive Producer
Paula S. Apsell
A DOX production for NOVA/WGBH and Channel 4
© 2003 WGBH Educational Foundation
Go to the companion Web site
NARRATOR: There's a region of our planet that no human being has ever visited. No one has ever seen this place, yet what happens here affects every one of us every day of our lives. It's 2,000 miles beneath our feet, the Earth's molten core. Here a vast ocean of liquid iron generates an invisible force, the Earth's magnetic field. It's what makes our compasses point north. But it does a lot more: it helps to keep the Earth a living planet. Our neighbors, Venus and Mars, have only weak magnetic fields, which means they're unprotected from the deadly radiation sweeping through the solar system. The Earth, on the other hand, exists within a vast magnetic cocoon, a force-field that for billions of years has sheltered us on our journey through space.
But now scientists have made a startling discovery. It seems there's a storm brewing deep within the Earth, a storm that is weakening our vital magnetic shield.
PETER OLSON (Johns Hopkins University): The Earth's magnetic field has been our protector for millennia, and now, it appears, it's about to go away.
JOHN SHAW (University of Liverpool): The Earth's magnet field is getting weaker rapidly.
MARIO ACUNA (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center): We cannot guarantee that the magnetic field of the Earth is still going to be there a thousand years from today.
NARRATOR: Is our invisible shield about to disappear?
JEREMY BLOXHAM (Harvard University): The question is not if that's going to happen, it's when that's going to happen.
NARRATOR: Could the Earth really lose its magnetic field? And what will happen if it does? Up next on NOVA: Magnetic Storm.
Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television.
We see 400 employees in three years. At Microsoft, your potential inspires us to create software that helps you reach it. Your potential, our passion.
Science: it's given us the framework to help make wireless communications clear. Sprint is proud to support NOVA.
And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.
NARRATOR: Searing heat, crushing pressure, and a billion trillion tons of molten iron: these are the conditions at the center of the earth.
PETER OLSON: This is the Sparrow's Point blast furnace for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and this is as close to the environment of the Earth's core as we have here on the surface of the Earth.
NARRATOR: Buried beneath nearly 2,000 miles of solid rock, the earth's core is inaccessible to geophysicists like Peter Olson.
PETER OLSON: About half way to the center of the Earth we reach the true heart of the Earth, the Earth's core, an immense molten sphere of liquid iron, and that's where the Earth's magnetic field is generated.
NARRATOR: But recently, scientists have detected a dramatic change in the Earth's magnetic field. The core's ability to generate the field seems to be faltering.
PETER OLSON: Today something very strange is going on with the Earth's magnetic field: its strength is rapidly decreasing, so fast that at the current rate it will last only into the next millennium.
NARRATOR: It seems the Earth's magnetic field is rapidly fading, a puzzle that is challenging scientists around the globe.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: It's quite surprising how little is understood about the Earth's magnetic field and how it's generated.
GARY GLATZMAIER (University of California, Santa Cruz): It was a very intriguing problem, something that was screaming out for an answer.
DANIEL LATHROP (University of Maryland): I often wished I could see the magnetic field. I'm motivated by the mysteries that are there.
NARRATOR: As scientists grapple with the complexities of the magnetic field, they realize that what is happening at the center of the Earth could change our world for generations to come.
Magnetism is something we're all familiar with. Its seemingly magical ability to attract and repel, delights and baffles. But this mysterious force is not just a curiosity. Magnetism, a close relative of electricity, lies at the heart of most modern technology, everything from power stations to the television you're watching now.
And, in fact, the Earth itself is a gigantic magnet. While we are constantly aware of the pull of gravity, most of the time we are oblivious to the other force the earth generates, the magnetic field. But, space scientists like Andrew Coates know how important it really is.
ANDREW COATES (Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London): The magnetic field's extent is really huge. It's the biggest thing really we have on Earth.
NARRATOR: The magnetic field is created deep in the Earth's core. It streams out near the South Pole, loops around the planet, and then runs back into the core near the north magnetic pole. This is the Earth's protective force field. Without it, we'd be in trouble.
ANDREW COATES: It protects us against radiation from space. It's a little bit like being in the pod here. This shields us from the weather on Earth; the magnetic field of the Earth shields us from space weather and space radiation.
NARRATOR: Space weather is nasty. The winds that blow through the galaxy are winds of radiation, some of the most harmful from distant exploding stars.
ANDREW COATES: But there is another source which is much nearer, which is our sun. The sun itself is a thermonuclear furnace, and this flings off huge amounts of dangerous material in very large explosions. In some cases, it's about the same mass as Mount Everest actually coming towards us.
NARRATOR: Every few hours the sun ejects billions of tons of electrically charged particles, the solar wind. Often the Earth lies directly in the path of this onslaught. But magnetism deflects charged particles. This means that the solar wind is unable to penetrate the Earth's magnetic shield, and so flows harmlessly around the planet.
The only visible signs of this drama far above our heads are the Northern and Southern Lights, produced when solar particles trapped in the Earth's magnetic field are dragged through the atmosphere towards the poles.
ANDREW COATES: Now we're lucky on the Earth, we have the magnetic field which deflects the particles and protects us. But if we lost the magnetic field, there would be nothing to stop the radiation bathing the whole of the atmosphere, and the effect would be much more dangerous.
NARRATOR: But just how dangerous? What would be the ultimate consequences for planet Earth if the magnetic field were to disappear altogether?
ACTUALITY (NASA Mission Control countdown): . . . five, four, three, two, one.
NARRATOR: The answer has become clear only recently.
ACTUALITY (NASA Mission Control): . . . and we have lift off of NASA's Mars Global Surveyor as America begins its journey back to the Red Planet.
NARRATOR: In 1996, NASA sent a satellite to Mars.
MARIO ACUNA: Mars has been a difficult planet to get to with spacecraft. Even after 16 missions by U.S. and Russia and so on, we still did not know whether Mars had an intrinsic magnetic field or not.
NARRATOR: It was this long-standing question which Mario Acuna and his team from NASA hoped finally to settle. What they actually uncovered was considerably more significant.
MARIO ACUNA: Nature had big surprises for us, beyond our wildest expectations.
NARRATOR: Hidden in the history of Mars lay the connection between magnetism and life.
MARIO ACUNA: And here is where we develop our expensive toys, our instruments. This is our lab.
NARRATOR: Mario is one of the world's leading experts on extra-terrestrial magnetic fields. He has sent instruments to measure them all over the solar system.
MARIO ACUNA: This one went to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond. This is Voyager 1 and 2. This one went to Mercury with Mariner 10. This one went around the orbit and the Sun. This one went to Comet Halley, for example.
NARRATOR: To measure magnetic fields, Mario uses a technique which was discovered a century and a half ago.
MARIO ACUNA: The simplest way to measure a magnetic field is with a little magnet, like we have here, that has been mounted in such a way that it can move freely in three dimensions. And this magnet, because a magnetic field is a force field, will align itself with the Earth's magnetic field. In this case, in this direction that we have here, which is actually going into the core at an angle of 70 degrees here and pointing North. So that gives us an idea of the direction of the field.
And you can see that if I perturb this magnet just slightly, how fast it recovers the original position gives us indication of the strength of the magnetic field. So it's very weak for the Earth. And if I use a strong permanent magnet, then we see that our test magnet moves much faster. So if I make this magnet work against a spring, I get an idea not only of the direction of the field, but also how strong it is.
NARRATOR: In the Mars Global Surveyor satellite, the instruments are electronic rather than mechanical, but the principle remains the same, a tiny electromagnet which works against a magnetic spring.
MARIO ACUNA: So here is my spring, here's my magnet, and if I pass an electrical current through my spring and measure the disturbance of my magnet, which is inside, then I can transmit back to Earth the information about the strength and the direction of the field we are trying to measure.
NARRATOR: As Mars Global Surveyor started to send back data, it soon became clear to Mario and the team that today Mars has no overall magnetic field. But the satellite also detected signs indicating that that had not always been the case.
MARIO ACUNA: We found these huge magnetic fields in the crust, and all of a sudden a completely unexpected and unknown planet, in a sense, emerged.
NARRATOR: Although there was no magnetism coming from the core of Mars, strangely, large areas of the surface were strongly magnetic.
The Martian crust is mainly made of frozen lava, a remnant of the time when Mars was covered with volcanoes, and there is a way volcanic rocks can get magnetized when they form. If molten rock cools in a strong magnetic field, iron-based minerals in it can pick up that magnetism, and the resulting solid rock will itself be magnetic.
So the fact that there was magnetism in the Martian crust proved that when the lava first erupted, Mars must have had a global magnetic field.
MARIO ACUNA: ...and not only that, at an intensity which is 20 to 30 times that of the Earth.
NARRATOR: Mario's team now knew that Mars had once had a magnetic shield which it must at some point have lost. They began to wonder whether this might be the solution to one of the great mysteries of the solar system.
Scientists suspect that the young Mars was in many ways an Earth-like place, with a thick atmosphere and oceans which may have harbored primitive life. But then, around 4,000,000,000 years ago, the planet entered a catastrophic decline. Gradually the atmosphere and oceans of Mars mysteriously disappeared.
MARIO ACUNA: The puzzle was, where did the water go? What process could have caused the loss of water?
NARRATOR: Mario realized that two dramatic events in the early history of Mars might lead him to the answer.
MARIO ACUNA: We found two very large impact basins in the southern hemisphere of Mars, which are Hellas and Argyre. There was absolutely no magnetization over them.
NARRATOR: In these basins, formed when two huge meteorites hit Mars, the rocks were strikingly free of magnetism. And that was odd, because the huge impacts must have melted the crust, and as it cooled again, the rocks should have become magnetized by the strong Martian magnetic field. Yet there was no trace of magnetism in Hellas and Argyre.
MARIO ACUNA: Which immediately meant that they were formed after the magnetic field of Mars had ceased to exist, and the estimate is that these impacts took place more than 4,000,000,000 years ago.
NARRATOR: Four billion years ago is when Mars was beginning to lose its water and atmosphere. Though not all scientists agree with him, Mario is convinced that the timing is not just a coincidence.
MARIO ACUNA: If we shut down the magnetic field, then the solar wind has direct access to the atmosphere of Mars. Then we have a process which is equivalent to the erosion in the desert. The wind blows and it blows the sand away. In this case, the sands are atmospheric particles. Slowly but surely, the atmospheric gases, which includes water, are carried away and are lost to Mars.
NARRATOR: The loss of its magnetic shield could well have meant death for the Red Planet. Exposed to the wind of radiation from the sun over millions of years, its atmosphere was gradually blown away, leaving the sterile world we see today.
MARIO ACUNA: If we were to turn off the Earth's magnetic field, the same process would occur. The atmosphere of Earth would be exposed to the erosional effects of the solar wind, and it would be slowly carried away.
NARRATOR: The fate of Mars suggests that without the protection of its magnetic shield, the Earth could also become a dead planet, which makes it all the more disturbing to learn that our own magnetic field is fading so rapidly.
Evidence of that decline has come from a surprising source. People have been making pottery for thousands of years. Archaeologists study pots to learn about ancient cultures. But these vessels have another story to tell.
JOHN SHAW: Pottery acts just like a magnetic tape recorder. It records the Earth's magnetic field when the pottery is first made.
NARRATOR: An ancient pot is a magnetic time capsule. John Shaw has learned how to extract from it a precise measurement of the strength of the magnetic field as it was in antiquity.
Like volcanic rock, clay contains tiny pieces of an iron-based mineral called magnetite. At the microscopic level, magnetite contains lots of distinct magnetic regions, in effect, tiny magnets. But in raw clay, these microscopic magnets all point in different directions, so they fail to create an overall magnetic field. That means a lump of clay on the potter's wheel is not, itself, magnetic. Not yet, anyway.
JOHN SHAW: Now the interesting part is when the pot's fired.
NARRATOR: The intense heat in the kiln erases all the magnetic regions. But as the pot begins to cool, new magnetic regions form in the magnetite. And as the regions reform, they align with the Earth's magnetic field, just like compass needles. With millions of tiny magnets all pointing in the same general direction, the pot itself becomes slightly magnetic. Once it has cooled, the magnetism is locked in.
JOHN SHAW: So if we take an ancient pot like this one, which is from Peru, when it cooled for the first time, it cooled in the Earth's ancient magnetic field and it became magnetized in that field. And of course, if the field's very strong, then the pot's strongly magnetized, and if the field's very weak, then the pot's weakly magnetized.
NARRATOR: By examining pottery from prehistory to modern times, John has discovered just how dramatically the field has changed in the last few centuries.
JOHN SHAW: When we plot the results from the ceramics, this is what we see: gentle changes as we come forward in time over twelve thousand years—a gentle rise—and then a rapid fall, as we come towards the present day. The rate of change is higher over the last three hundred years than it has been for any time in the past five thousand. It's going from a strong field down to a weak field, and it's doing it very quickly.
NARRATOR: In three hundred years the field has fallen 10 percent. And the rate of decline is increasing. In just a few centuries it could be gone altogether. So is the Earth going the way of Mars? There's only one place to look for an answer, the inaccessible region where the field is generated, the Earth's core.
But with no way to get to the core, Professor Dan Lathrop is playing with fire, as he and his students try to build it in their lab. They want to find out just what keeps the magnetic field going, and what might cause it to disappear. They model the liquid metal core with sodium, because it's highly conductive and much easier to melt than iron.
DANIEL LATHROP: Sodium, actually, at room temperature is really a very soft metal, sort of cheesy. Of course, when we heat it up to around the boiling point of water then it becomes liquid, and that's when we actually run the experiments. But it certainly is a hazard in the lab. If we put sodium down in some water, you get little explosions and burning coming off of it.
WOODROW SHEW (University of Maryland): What you're looking at here is a sphere which contains about 110 kilograms of sodium. When we run an experiment, we'll start spinning this ball like the Earth is spinning, and make measurements of the magnetic field that it generates on its own.
NARRATOR: What they're trying to create is a self-sustaining electro-magnetic dynamo, because that's what they think the Earth is. Scientists have a theory about how the core generates the magnetic field. It's based on the close relationship of magnetism to electricity. In particular, the fact that electric currents create magnetic fields.
DANIEL LATHROP: So there's no electric current going through the coil to start with, the iron fillings just go down like pepper in a pan, but if I turn on the electric current, then you can see the iron filings line up with the magnetic field that's produced by the current in this electric coil. So it's really currents inside the Earth's liquid metal core that we think gives rise to the magnetic field.
NARRATOR: But what gives rise to the electric currents? The answer to that is where things get complicated. Scientists believe that just as the electric currents produce the magnetic field, so the magnetic field produces the electric currents. The key is that the liquid metal in the core is in constant motion.
DANIEL LATHROP: If you take a moving conductor in the presence of a magnetic field, currents get set up inside the conductor.
NARRATOR: In the Earth, the moving conductor is a billion trillion tons of molten iron, but the effect can be seen in a simple loop of wire, connected only to a meter which measures electric currents.
DANIEL LATHROP: If I move this conductor in the presence of the Earth's magnetic field then that gives rise to currents. Once you have currents, those give rise to magnetic fields. So it's kind of a curious loop that gets set up in the Earth's core. A little bit of magnetic field coupled in to the motion of the liquid gives rise to currents flowing in the core. Those currents cause more magnetic field, which cause more currents, more magnetic field. So it's kind of a feed-back loop that can cause the magnetic field to just rise.
NARRATOR: If it works in the Earth's core, it should work in the lab. Scientists are not quite sure what got the Earth's dynamo started; it may have been stray magnetic fields from the Sun. But to get a small-scale version going, Dan uses a powerful magnet.
DANIEL LATHROP: We apply a large magnetic field on the sodium flow inside the sphere, and you can get a feel for how strong the magnetic field is. Dan, turn on the magnets. We can actually see how they attract this chain quite strongly—wipe out any bad credit cards you might have in a hurry.
NARRATOR: If the electro-magnetic dynamo theory is right, then the field generated by their miniature core will be stronger than the field they started with, the magnetism rapidly growing by drawing energy from the motion of the liquid sodium conductor. It's something they haven't yet achieved, but already they have revealed a crucial clue to what might cause a planet's magnetic field to fail.
DANIEL LATHROP: Well, the different experiments that have been run have shown that moving liquid metal is critical to getting the magnetic field to arise.
NARRATOR: So if the core were ever to cool to the point where the liquid iron solidified and stopped moving, the dynamo would shut down. This may be why Mars lost its magnetic field so early in its history.
DANIEL LATHROP: Because Mars is a smaller planet, it will have cooled more quickly than the Earth. So there's a very good chance that Mars has simply become too cold to sustain an active dynamo. It could be that the liquid metal core just froze out at some point.
NARRATOR: But will what happened to Mars eventually happen to the Earth?
PETER OLSON: The Earth's core is very slowly cooling at the rate of perhaps 100 degrees per billion years, so eventually the whole of the core will freeze. At that point the dynamo will die.
NARRATOR: But scientists calculate that the cooling of the Earth's core is so slow that that point lies billions of years in the future.
PETER OLSON: The Earth's magnetic field has been around for a long time, at least two billion years. It has lasted so long because it has a very large energy source in the original heat that the Earth's core inherited when it was formed. So the Earth can sustain the magnetic field for billions and billions of years of time.
NARRATOR: What's more, the history of the field's decline revealed by the pottery record just doesn't fit the idea that the Earth's internal dynamo is shutting down. Surprisingly, the Earth's field is fading too quickly.
MARIO ACUNA: If we were to shut down the heat flux in the Earth, it would take hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps millions of years, for the field to decrease. And that's not what we see. We see a field decrease which is much faster than that, so there is something else going on in the case of the Earth.
NARRATOR: But what? Searching for clues to what's happening deep inside our planet, scientists have turned their attention to a chain of volcanic islands in the middle of the Pacific. Here, there's a record of the earth's magnetic field that stretches back millions of years, a record, not of gradual decline, but of a series of spectacular magnetic upheavals.
On the big island of Hawaii, some of the heat that drives the Earth's dynamo finds its way to the surface. For several years now, Mt. Kilauea has been continuously erupting. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey need to sample the lava to keep an eye on the volcano.
MIKE FULLER (University of Hawaii): It solidifies pretty fast, as you can see.
NARRATOR: But geophysicist Mike Fuller is interested in the lava for another reason, what it tells him about the earth's magnetic field. It all begins when the lava hits the sea.
MIKE FULLER: You can see the lava's having moved down from the volcano up here, sometimes in tubes, mostly in tubes. Now we're beginning to see it come out and go into the water and form the very newest bit of the island chain of Hawaii. As this lava hits the seawater, of course, it really chills very, very fast. And a very wonderful thing happens. They actually trap in...they record the Earth's magnetic field.
NARRATOR: As they solidify and cool, these volcanic rocks are preserving a record of today's magnetic field. But the volcanoes of Hawaii have been erupting, on and off, for millions of years, building up the islands. Every layer of lava contains a record of the magnetic field at the time of that eruption. So the Hawaiian archipelago is a hidden chronicle of the Earth's magnetism stretching back five and a half million years. That record shows there have been many fluctuations in the field's strength, but it contains something else of great significance.
When lava cools—as with pottery—magnetic regions form within it. Acting like microscopic compass needles, they record not only how strong the field is, but also in what direction it is pointing.
Today the Earth's magnetic field runs from south to north—which is why compass needles point towards the North Pole—and recent lava flows record a field pointing north.
But 50 years ago, when scientists measured the magnetism trapped in older lava samples, they made a startling discovery: the microscopic magnets within the lava were all pointing south.
MIKE FULLER: When we go back about 780,000 years we find an incredible phenomenon. Suddenly the rocks are magnetized backwards. Instead of them being magnetized to the north like today's field, they are magnetized to the south.
NARRATOR: It seemed that prior to 780,000 years ago, Hawaiian lava must have cooled within a global magnetic field that was running to the south and away from the north, exactly the reverse of today. The bizarre implication was that at some point the entire global magnetic field had done a sudden 180-degree flip, completely reversing direction.
MIKE FULLER: It was hard for people to accept. They did not like the idea that the field reversed. It took about 50 years to convince people of this, but eventually that was established, and really by work on this island, because if you keep on going down you would find that after about another couple of hundred thousand years, then it changes again. And you see this sequence going on.
NARRATOR: And as they examined samples from older and older lava, scientists found more and more reversals—on average, one every 200,000 years.
MIKE FULLER: And so, by the time people had done that, it was pretty obvious that the field did indeed reverse.
NARRATOR: But if the field has reversed so often in the past, it must surely do so again in the future.
MIKE FULLER: That the Earth's magnetic field reverses is an extraordinary phenomenon, but this reversal process is quite common. The last reversal was what, 780,000 years ago? Before that, there was one about 200,000, before that, again, actually less than 200, so in a sense we are a bit overdue for a reversal.
NARRATOR: So is this why the field is getting weaker today? Could it be getting ready to flip? Scientists needed to discover whether there was a link between changes in the strength of the magnetic field, and changes in its direction.
GARY GLATZMAIER: It was a very intriguing problem, something that was screaming out for an answer. And computers were becoming powerful enough to actually solve a full set of equations that describe convection in the core of the Earth and how that motion generates a magnetic field.
NARRATOR: In the 1990s, physicist Gary Glatzmaier decided to embark on a very ambitious experiment. He put all the essential facts that scientists had learned about the Earth's molten core into a computer model: dozens of equations describing its dimensions, temperature, viscosity and so forth. Then he let the model run to see how the magnetic field would evolve over hundreds of thousands of years of simulated time.
GARY GLATZMAIER: It's important to understand just how long these simulations take. Each time the computer solves the equations it advances the whole solution one time step, and a time step is typically ten days. And within ten days things don't change much, which means you have to do many, many solutions. You have to solve it millions of times, tens of millions of times, in order to be able to simulate hundreds of thousands of years, which is what we needed. One case may take six months of running on the fastest computers in the world.
I was using supercomputers from the Department of Energy, from NASA and the National Science Foundation, and no matter where I was, the first thing I'd do is make sure the computers didn't crash. So it was something I did every day, seven days a week for over four years.
And I remember there was a period of time, I believe it was in the fall, and I was traveling to other universities and giving talks, and after a number of weeks I came back and decided, "Well, now I need to look at the details of the magnetic field." And realized that it was in the reverse polarity! It really had reversed. This is something I didn't expect.
So then I looked at many snapshots during the time I was gone and realized that the field did indeed reverse spontaneously. This was the first time it happened. We were very anxious to write about it. It was really exciting!
NARRATOR: And as the experiment continued, so did the reversals, every hundred thousand years or so of simulated time. And crucially, each time the field reversed, the process began the same way.
GARY GLATZMAIER: What's interesting is whenever it has reversed its polarity, its direction, that happened when the magnetic intensity was very weak. So it was decreasing and decreasing and finally when the dipole part of the field was very weak, then the field reversed.
NARRATOR: Here was the evidence that what we are seeing today, a loss of field strength, is indeed linked to the onset of reversals. What's more, Gary could see why reversals are heralded by a weakening field.
GARY GLATZMAIER: Now this movie will show part of a simulation that spans a magnetic field reversal. What you see here as blue represents inward directed magnetic field, and the gold represents outward directed magnetic field.
NARRATOR: In Gary's model, reversals seem to start with the appearance of islands of blue in the gold, and vice versa. These are magnetic anomalies, regions of the core where the field is already flowing the wrong way. As they grow, these patches where the field is reversed start to cancel out the main field, making it weaker and more liable to flip.
GARY GLATZMAIER: You see, as the time goes on, the field becomes more and more complicated. And then you get an anomaly growing in the northern hemisphere, where the magnetic field now is going out. There is a reversal. Now the magnetic field is outward in the northern hemisphere and inward in the southern hemisphere.
NARRATOR: So now the burning question is, "Is what's happening in Gary's model reflected in the real Earth?" Is the 300-year decline in our field which the pottery reveals, the work of magnetic anomalies brewing deep in the core beneath our feet? If so, then a reversal really could be in the cards.
Amazingly, there are detailed records that cover exactly this 300 year period: the log books of Her Majesty's Navy. For as geophysicist Jeremy Bloxham has discovered, eighteenth and nineteenth century sailors were obsessed with the magnetic field.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: Back in the days of James Cook, when he was doing his voyages of exploration, a compass was the primary means of navigation. However, a compass needle doesn't point at true north, at the real geographical North Pole, instead it points at magnetic north.
NARRATOR: For sailors, knowing the difference between true north and magnetic north was a matter of life and death. But as they were well aware, magnetic north keeps moving, wandering about near the pole as the field gradually changes. So navigators needed to measure the difference between magnetic north and true north, the angle of variation. They did this by comparing their compass bearing to an astronomical calculation of true north.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: The trick was to find true north, and they could do this by looking at the sun at noon, when it's highest in the sky, alternatively by measuring the angle the sun made at sunrise or sunset. Here, on the 8th of June, 1770, we have a magnetic variation of 4 degrees, 53 minutes east.
NARRATOR: Thousands of these observations, together with early measures of the local strength of the field, have enabled Jeremy to reconstruct the ebb and flow of the Earth's magnetism over the past three centuries. And it's what this reveals about one region in particular that's significant.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: We've seen very abrupt changes in the Earth's magnetic field beneath the South Atlantic Ocean.
NARRATOR: Beneath the South Atlantic, Jeremy has found clear evidence for a region of magnetic anomalies, places were the field has already started to reverse. And these anomalies are growing.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: As we get into the beginning of the 20th century, we see the emergence of a new patch of reverse flux, a region where the field lines, instead of coming out of the core, are looping back into the core. And that patch then drifts towards the west, hooking up with this other patch of reverse flux to create a large region of what we call the "South Atlantic anomaly," where the field is about 30 percent weaker. And that patch has grown substantially during the last hundred years in particular. So one question we're all asking ourselves at the moment is, "Is the Earth's magnetic field about to flip?"
NARRATOR: In a region of the core 2,000 miles beneath the South Atlantic, the magnetic currents have reversed direction, canceling out the main field, causing its strength to decline. If things continue like this, then we could experience a magnetic phenomenon the Earth has not seen for 780,000 years, a complete flip of the entire global field.
JEREMY BLOXHAM: There's really no question about whether the Earth's magnetic field will reverse again. The question is not, if that's going to happen, it's when that's going to happen.
GARY GLATZMAIER: Actually, in the last few hundred years, the intensity of the magnetic field on the Earth has been decreasing, which is an indication that maybe we're in for a reversal. The average time between reversals is on the order of a few hundred thousand years. We're actually sort of due for one.
NARRATOR: No one has ever experienced a magnetic reversal. If this is really the beginning of a flip, what exactly will happen next?
One man who may know, is geologist Rob Coe. For 25 years, he's been coming to Steens Mountain in Oregon, a vast heap of hundreds of ancient lava flows.
ROB COE (University of California, Santa Cruz): Sixteen million years ago there was a huge series of eruptions here. You can pick out literally hundreds of lava flows over on that wall. Each line delineates a different lava flow. It's over 3,000 feet of overlying flows.
NARRATOR: What makes Steens special, is that 16 million years ago, when this lava was erupted, the magnetic field was in the middle of a flip. Taking samples from dozens of flows all the way up the mountain, Rob and his colleagues have pieced together a detailed record of this magnetic reversal, although it's so surprising that not everyone accepts it.
ROB COE: What we found as it started to reverse was the strength of the Earth's field decreased dramatically, by 80 or 90 percent.
NARRATOR: The field started out pointing south, but as it weakened the direction of the field began to change erratically. After 300 years, it had swung a full 180 degrees to point north, and the field strength started to recover.
ROB COE: But it couldn't hold that polarity, and it fell back to...reversed and the intensity crashed again.
NARRATOR: Once more the Earth's magnetic shield practically disappeared, this time for 3,000 years. What was left was changing so fast that Rob found a flow that captured these wild gyrations even as the lava cooled.
ROB COE: And what we found was even harder to believe. The quickly chilled margins in the bottom and the top had one direction, like that of the underlying flow, and the middle portion had a direction that was sixty degrees farther away. It was just as though, while the flow cooled, the field had moved sixty degrees, which if you calculate it out, that comes to about six degrees of movement per day. If we were observing this with a compass, you would be able almost to see the motion with your eye. It was truly astonishing and extraordinary.
NARRATOR: The lava layers of Steens Mountain suggest we could be in for magnetic chaos, with magnetic north changing from day to day. More seriously, for perhaps thousands of years, the Earth's magnetic shield will be weakened, something that will affect every person on the planet.
GARY GLATZMAIER: The intensity of the magnetic field will be weaker, maybe ten, maybe a hundred times weaker than it is today, which means that more cosmic radiation will get through.
ANDREW COATES: This basically opens our defenses so that solar and galactic radiation can hit the atmosphere directly. And this means that the radiation at ground level increases as well.
NARRATOR: One estimate is that our overall exposure to cosmic radiation will double. And in some places it could be even worse.
Today, the magnetic field focuses space radiation towards the far north and south where few people live. But as the main field collapses, the weak field that's left will have a more complex structure. Instead of just two magnetic poles, there may be four or even eight, slowly moving across the Earth's surface.
GARY GLATZMAIER: The structure of the magnetic field won't be the nice, smooth, simple dipole structure that we have today, which tends to deflect charged particles—cosmic radiation—to the poles of the Earth. Instead there will be several poles all around the Earth, maybe close to the equator. And so, not only will the, the field be weaker, the field will tend to focus cosmic radiation at low latitudes where most people live.
ANDREW COATES: This unfortunately means more deaths from cancer. It's roughly 15 per million people per year. That is the amount of deaths we're talking about. And if you multiply that over the whole population of the Earth, that becomes a significant number.
NARRATOR: It's impossible to know for sure, but the best guess is that every year a hundred thousand people would die from the increased levels of space radiation. But of course this would still represent only a relatively small increase in the overall incidence of cancer.
GARY GLATZMAIER: So it's not going to be catastrophic. It'll be something to be concerned about, but it won't be a catastrophic event. And certainly by the time it happens, civilization will have figured out how to deal with it.
MARIO ACUNA: The field will come back. In the case of Mars we know that the field will not come back, and it has been gone for billions of years, so the effect has been very, very serious on the Mars atmosphere. But on the Earth's atmosphere just a few thousand years of no magnetic field are not expected to result in a very large stripping of the atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Scientists now know that the magnetic reversal that is inevitably coming will have serious consequences for our descendents, but it won't be a disaster for planet Earth. And as our children's children's children wait for north to become south, they may find that a world without a strong magnetic field has its compensations.
ANDREW COATES: The great thing is that it would be possible to see the aurora just about every night all over the Earth. So London, behind me, for example, we might be able to see great aurora just about every night of the year, shimmering and moving in the sky as the solar wind hits the atmosphere directly, and it glows like a neon light.
GARY GLATZMAIER: Aurora will be very exciting. I can imagine a very exciting, very interesting dynamic magnetic field outside of the Earth during the next reversal.
MIKE FULLER: I would love to see a reversal happening, but it would involve me living rather longer than I plan to. But that would be very nice. In fact it's one of the great tragedies of life, we never see how these things work out!
ROB COE: I'd really like to know how it does it and why it does it. And when will it do it again?
None of us will be around for the next magnetic reversal. But on NOVA's Website, get a sneak preview of what the night sky will look like when it happens. Find it on PBS.org.
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PRODUCTION CREDITS Magnetic Storm
Written and Produced by
David Sington
Directed by
Duncan Copp
Associate Producer
Sarah Kinsella
Edited by
Christy Hanna
Narrated by
Gene Galusha
Camera
Nigel Meakin
Clive North
Hugh Hood
Paul Atkins
Sound Recordists
John Pritchard
Kevin Meredith
Chris Wright
Grace Niska Atkins
Assistant Camera
Peter Meakin
Music
Judith Edelman
Recorded and Mixed By
James Rubin at Random Recording, Nashville
Animation
Gareth Edwards
Production Manager
Selina Kay
Online Editor and Colorist
Mike Curd
Audio Mix
Danny Finn
Archival Material
NASA
Special Thanks
British Airways London Eye
Bethlehem Steel Corporation
Emilio Herrero
Christina Heliker, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
Kevin Millward, Gladstone Pottery Museum
Cathy and Ken Lohmann
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
National Maritime Museum, London
Natural History Museum, London
Public Record Office, London
NOVA Series Graphics
National Ministry of Design
NOVA Theme
Mason Daring
Martin Brody
Michael Whalen
Post Production Online Editor
Mark Steele
Closed Captioning
The Caption Center
NOVA Administrator
Queene Coyne
Publicity
Jonathan Renes
Diane Buxton
Tom Stebbins
Senior Researcher
Ethan Herberman
Production Coordinator
Linda Callahan
Unit Managers
Holly Archibald
Lola Norman-Salako
Paralegal
Nancy Marshall
Legal Counsel
Susan Rosen Shishko
Post Production Assistant
Patrick Carey
Associate Producer, Post Production
Nathan Gunner
Post Production Supervisor
Regina O'Toole
Post Production Editor
Rebecca Nieto
Post Production Manager
Maureen Barden Lynch
Supervising Producer
Stephen Sweigart
Producer, Special Projects
Susanne Simpson
Coordinating Producer
Laurie Cahalane
Senior Science Editor
Evan Hadingham
Senior Series Producer
Melanie Wallace
Managing Director
Alan Ritsko
Senior Executive Producer
Paula S. Apsell
A DOX production for NOVA/WGBH and Channel 4
© 2003 WGBH Educational Foundation
Photonic Dipole