Polar shift refers to an event, triggered by a mass of space dust travelling on a 3000 year eleptical orbit, and every 3000 years when it comes near the Earth, it is said to be able to reverse the polarity of the magma in the core. This is said to be possible because the core magma is a heterogeneous mixture, ie, there are floating chunks in this molten mix of charged ions. When polarity is reversed, the chunks band against the inside of the earth, for lack of better terms. This is said to cause catastropic weather events, such as the tsunami in Asis or the 4 Florida hurricanes. Furtehrmore, it is said that the events will eventually climax until the actual crust of the Earth will seperate from the inner layers, and because of the reversed polarity, the polar ice caps would do a 90 degree shift and be on what is now the equator, resulting in the biggest climate change in history i.e. entire conitnents disappearing.

I was too lazy to find an article online, however this is basically word-for-word what I read in a science journal/periodical.

Discuss.

This sounds like just a big a pile of bullshit as Adam walked w/dinosaurs article. I'd like to know what journal this came from. If this truely happened on a 3000 year time scale, there would be plenty of evidence of this happening previously.

Yeah. It sounds like bullshit to me too. But they said there were fossil and rock records..or something. Anyway I don't remember what magazine it was.

You say it holds 6 beers at one time? Brilliant! Let's Drink Them!

If this idea intrigues you, read this book. Now. You'll love it.

Fingerprints Of The Gods, by Graham Hancock.

http://www.grahamhancock.com/library/fotg/default.htm

Graham Hancock is probably a nutcase. I've read three or four of his books, this was my favorite, The Sign And The Seal is his most famous. He has collaborated with a guy named Robert Bauval on a couple of works and his stuff is fun too.

There is a lot of evidence that this has happened periodically in the earth's past, these pole shifts. The best physical evidence is in volcanic rock that shows different magnetic influences in relatively regular periods in the stone. In some layers, the magnetism directs the iron atoms one direction when they cooled, and at other times in the opposite direction, but it is not a gradual shift but a radical shift that happens very quickly, almost instantaneously. Mind you, I'm reciting this stuff from memory of a book I read nearly ten years ago.

To understand the effect, think about it this way. Have you ever played with magnets? If you take a compass, the needle should point north. If you put a magnet near the compass however, it will point towards the magnet. If you then take the magnet and spin it around the compass really fast, the needle will spin in circle chasing the magnet. If you do this long enough and violently enough, YOU WILL REVERSE THE POLARITY OF THE COMPASS so that it points SOUTH! It's fun, but you will ruin the compass.

Anyway, magnets have a tendency to be stable, holding their polarity, but occasionally, either from outside influence or even sometimes apparently spontaneously, they will instantly switch their polarity. It happens all at once. Obviously, if it didn't happen all at once, the magnet would cease to be a magnet, right?

So what would happen to the earth if it's polarity switched instantaneously? The analogy that Hancock used was to imagine the rind of an orange if it weren't tightly attached to the fruit inside, but merely held generally in place relatively stably (but as we know from Indonesia, not perfectly stably). If the earth's magnetic field were to instantly switch its polarity, the magma in the earth's core, which is mostly magnetized iron, would all swing around very quickly to realign with the new field. This radical core shift would undoubtedly cause major earthquakes, and possibly even for the entire crust of the earth to shift in one big piece, like the rind of an orange, by MANY degrees, perhaps as much as 90 degrees, but likely somewhat less.

So maybe later I'll write some more about this. I'll write about Hancock's theories, which parts of them I agree with, and the further conclusions that I've drawn from them about pole shifts in the earth's not so distant past.

--PunkDavid

I learned in my geology class that this has happened several times in the Earth's history, but not with the severe disaster-scenario consequences. I think this is a case of more scientists reaching for a research grant or something...

Yeah, I'm confident I've read papers and been lectured on changes in the poles of the Earth. I didn't think it happened as often as 3000 years or with the dire consequences, but I do think it has happened.

I agree, I definitely remember from classes that polar shifts happen, but how often I don't remember anymore.

I read up on it a little, and it seems that the article I originally read was uhh..pretty exaggerated. It's at least 50000 years or so, maybe a million or two that it happens, and there are actually 2 scenarios, one of which being the one I mentioned, that the crust shifts, but more probable is the second scenario, that the magnetic north will just reverse.