The way that water moves around the planet's surface is one factor that causes the two poles to drift, the study said. More Earth science: Scientists say Earth is spinning faster than it has in decades.
In addition to melting glaciers, the pumping of groundwater has contributed to the shift in Earth's axis, the study said. In the past, only natural factors such as ocean currents and the convection of hot rock deep in the planet contributed to the pole drift, the Guardian said.
Climate scientist Vincent Humphrey of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who was not involved in the new research, said the Earth spins around its axis like a top. If the weight of a top shifts, the spinning top would lean and wobble as its rotational axis changes. Scientists estimate that past polar flips have been rather sluggish, with north and south migrating to opposite positions over thousands of years. The sluggish polar meander is good, because it means we have time to prepare and can do our best to ameliorate any unpleasant effects before they get really unpleasant.
Eventually they will sort this out, and all other things being equal, life will go on. Not exactly. Because it never has. However, if the magnetic field gets substantially weaker and stays that way for an appreciable amount of time Earth will be less protected from the oodles of high-energy particles that are constantly flying around in space.
This means that everything on the planet will be exposed to higher levels of radiation, which over time could produce an increase in diseases like cancer, as well as harm delicate spacecraft and power grids on Earth. That being said, one total bonus of having a weaker magnetic field is that auroras will be visible from much lower latitudes, so the nighttime skies will be even more epic. Shimmering curtains of light adorn the night sky over Alaska.
Known as the aurora borealis, or northern lights, these displays are created when charged particles from the sun interact with gases in Earth's atmosphere. All rights reserved. Wait, what! So what is a geomagnetic reversal? Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets.
India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big Grassroots efforts are bringing solar panels to rural villages without electricity, while massive solar arrays are being built across the country.
So we employed numerous scientific techniques including radiocarbon dating and beryllium isotope analysis. The latter involves tracking the presence of an isotope called beryllium This is formed when high-energy cosmic particles bombard Earth, colliding with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. Read more: New evidence for a human magnetic sense that lets your brain detect the Earth's magnetic field. Our findings confirmed this. Several generations of people would have witnessed a plethora of spectacular auroras during the Laschamp excursion.
But at 14, years old, the records from these lakes are much younger than the Laschamp excursion. Four decades later, our work at Lake Selina with modern techniques has revealed the exciting potential for similar research at other Australian lakes. With this knowledge, we may one day potentially be able to predict the next geomagnetic excursion, before our phones stop working and the birds overhead veer off-course and crash into windows. Our dating of the Lake Selina core is just the start.
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