Is the pole shift going to happen any time soon?

Question

im scared!

Answer 1

It is happening right this very moment, as I type this answer.

however, it is going v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, at the rate of a few inches per year.

Not to worry, dudette.  It will NOT be a mega-disaster.

Answer 2

What pole shift?

And why should we be scared of a pole shift?

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Because the Earth's crust is not solidly fixed upon the mantle, it moves around.  Since our position system is planted on the crust (e.g., position of observatories), the position of the pole of rotation appears to move.

It does not, really.  It is the reference system that moves with the crust.  But still, that is called a pole shift and it can reach quite a few inches per year!

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"flip" of the rotation axis?

A sudden flip is physically impossible.  Long term flips are possible.  Venus has seen its rotation axis reversed in just under four billion years.  I was surprised that it could be that fast.

According to the scientific paper where it is explained, it was caused by the tidal effect of the Sun.

Because Earth is more massive than Venus AND further from the Sun, it would take longer than the lifetime of the Sun on the Main Sequence to flip Earth's poles.

If you plan to live that long, then there are two other things that you should be scared of instead:  In 5 billion years (well before the pole shift), the Sun will become a red giant and it will impossible to live on Earth, and the planet could find itself inside the Sun's surface.  Not good.

In 3 billion years, there may be a collision between our Galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy.

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A magnetic pole is just the name we give to locations, on Earth's surface, where the magnetic field is exactly vertical.  The magnetic itself is generated at the interface between the outer core and the inner mantle.  It moves constantly, therefore the position of the "poles" moves.  In fact, for a while, there were two magnetic poles in the southern hemisphere.

Every 700,000 years on average, the magnetic field reverses its polarity.  The process takes a thousand years.  Although we are due, we do not know if the process has even begun yet.  We do know that it had not begun 20 years ago.

Therefore, it cannot be done in time for the Big 2012 Hoax Off.

When I did research on this a long time ago, I had concluded that the "flip" would take place around the 3500s.  However, it may very well be that it could be as early as the 3100s.

I would love to still be around, just to check on the date...

Answer 3

SHUT

THE

****

UP

Answer 4

Dec 21 2112

Don't buy Christmas Presents

Answer 5

It's already happening.  It's not instantaneous.  It takes a few decades.

.

Answer 6

Who knows?  It will happen when it happens.

More likely is that the Earth will roll 90 degrees or so when most or all of the arctic ice cap melts, leaving the rotational mass of the Earth unbalanced by the weight that sits off of the axis of rotation at the South Pole.

But don't hold your breath...

Answer 7

I think it's scheduled for next week sometime...Tuesday, maybe?

NOT!

I can appreciate that you are concerned about it, but it's out of our control.  Your efforts would be better spent on environmental or political issues.  These things are gauranteed to affect your life in the near future, whereas the pole shift is just another doomsday prediction that might never happen...

Answer 8

The pole shift will not happen abruptly. It will happen over the course of thousands, or even millions of years. By that time, mankind would have adapted, or is already extinct.

I would be worried about other things, if I were you.

Answer 9

It depends on what you mean...

The earth is not going to suddenly flip upside:

The magnetic poles move all the time.

There is a geologic record that shows it has happened many times in our past but not at regular intervals. Time between reversals can be 10000 yrs or a million years.

However - we know that the magnetic field does not collapse in the process - if it did, there would be major extinctions that correlate with the geologic record for pole reversals - there is no correlation.

The latest hypothesis is that the Earth's magnetic field gets chaotic, with lots of north and south poles - so we still have a magnetic field, but compasses will be useless. And then it straightens itself back out, but with north and south reverse.

This is actually similar to what the sun does - but the sun does it on a regular 11 year cycle.

As for when it will happen - those people that observe the magnetic field think it will go through its chaotic thing and reverse some time soon based on how it is currently behaving, but that is a hypothesis waiting for the event to occur to be tested, and the exact date certainly is not known.

Now for the rotational axis and its shift:

The axis of the earth does wobble on several known timescales. These wobbles are known as the Milankovic cycles.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovic_...

Basically the axis of the earth’s rotation does not always point to Polaris (the Pole Star); and we are not always inclined at 23.5 deg. So the poles do move relative to the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun, and relative to the stars – but the shifts are minor.

Answer 10

Like other comments, it takes THOUSANDS of YEARS for it to happen (most people do not know that), so by the time it happens we will probably have terraformed and be living on another planet. And when it happens to Earth we can just leave if we want (that's if it gets bad).

Answer 11

for the millionth time NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...