A Brief Guide To

Magnetism, Terrestrial
Magnetic Field and Polar
Reversals
Jack Oughton
 
 Definitions
Curie temperature (Tc) The
temperature above which a
ferromagnetic material loses
its permanent magnetism. In
minerals, lightning often flash-
heats minerals above their
Curie temperatures, effectively
resetting the magnetic fields
trapped in lava flows.
Dynamo- A system that
uses electromagnetic
induction to convert
mechanical energy
(motion) into a magnetic
field
Ferromagnetism is
believed to be caused by
magnetic fields
generated by the
electrons' spins in
combination with a
mechanism known as
exchange coupling,
which aligns all the spins
in each magnetic
Magnetism in a nutshell
➠Ampere suggests in 1820 that
magnetic properties of matter
were due to tiny atomic currents

•The dynamo theory proposed

by the German-born American
physicist Walter M. Elsasser and
the British geophysicist Edward
Bullard during the mid-1900s

➠All atoms exhibit magnetic

effects
A magnet cannot have a single ➠The medium in which charges
North pole or a single South
are moving effects magnetic
pole, which would be called a
‘monopole’ forces
All known magnetic fields are caused by the movement of
electrical charges. Electrons in orbit in atoms give rise to magnetic
fields, so that every atom is, like the Earth, surrounded by a
magnetic field
 Importance of the poles
• if you break a bar magnet into two pieces, each
piece will again have a North and South pole.  If you
take one of those pieces and break it again, each
smaller piece will have a North and South pole.  No
matter how small the pieces of the magnet
become, each piece must have two poles.
• Without this, the field could not reverse
 The Magnetic
Field
• A magnetic field is an area of
magnetic activity
• The magnetic field at any
given point is specified by both
a direction and a magnitude(or
strength)
• The earth has a magnetic
field..
Our Magnetic Field / The
Magnetosphere
• The Earth's magnetic field near
the surface is very similar to a
field produced by a magnetic
dipole (e.g. a bar magnet).
• The best-fit dipole is located at
the centre of the Earth pointing
south and is not perfectly
aligned with the south pole.
• Magnetic north is not ‘true
north’
• The Earth's magnetic field is
created by Earth's partially
ionized outer core, which
rotates more rapidly than the
Earth's surface.
• Ocean water generates electric currents as it
moves in the main field, so that the ebb and flow of
the tides have a slight magnetic effect.
• As gauged by satellites, the main field is roughly
6,000 times stronger than the rock magnetism of
the ocean floor, and 30,000 times greater than the
influence of the oceanic tides.
• Fun fact: it’s believed a "supergiant" asteroid
several times larger than the one that likely
killed the dinosaurs struck Mars with such force
that it shut down the planet's magnetic field*
Cause of the Field – The Dynamo
effect
• The way earthquake
waves spread indicates that
the Earth has at its center a
dense liquid core, of
about 1/2 the radius of the
Earth
•Inside that, a solid inner
core.
•It is believed this core is
made up of molten iron,
perhaps mixed with nickel
and sulfur..
•Iron concentrated in the
Earth's core because it is
heavy--the same reason
that, when extracted from
• Scientists aren’t clear about what provides the heat in
the Earth's core.
• It might come from some of the iron becoming solid and
joining the inner core.
• Or generated by radioactivity, like the heat of the Earth's
crust
• Dynamo effect is thought to generate the sun’s powerful
magnetism.
• The outer core also has "hurricanes"--whirlpools
powered by the Coriolis forces of Earth's rotation.
• These complex motions generate our planet's
magnetism through the dynamo effect.
• The source of the field, the outer core, is itself seething,
swirling, turbulent. "It's chaotic down there,”
• The changes we detect on our planet's surface are a sign
of that inner chaos.
what does the magnetic
field • do ?
Without it, life would die.
• It shields our planet against
charged atomic particles coming
from outer space, and the sun’s
solar wind.
• Protects our satellites and
astronauts, depending on how
high they are in orbit
• Birds, fish and migratory
animals rely on the steadiness of
the magnetic field to navigate.
•Dr. Kirschvink of the California
Institute of Technology
discovered such reliance in bees,
pigeons, bacteria, salmon,
whales and newts, among other
animals.
•The magnetic sense, he found,
usually relies on tiny crystals of
Magnetic Polar
Wandering
•James Ross located the pole for the
first time in 1831 after an
exhausting arctic journey during
which his ship got stuck in the ice
for four years.
•In 1904, Roald Amundsen found
the pole again and discovered that
it had moved at least 50 km
since the days of Ross.
•The North Magnetic Pole is
currently located in northern
Canada. It wanders in an elliptical
path each day, and moves, on the
average, more than forty meters
northward each day.
•Evidence indicates that the North
Magnetic Pole has wandered over
• In 2007 scientists confirmed that the
pole is now moving toward Siberia at
34 to 37 miles (55 to 60 kilometers)
a year.
• It’s fluctuations are thought to be
caused by instability in the core
How do we tell there have
been shifts in the past?
•Many rocks have built-in
magnetism that remembers the
direction of the main magnetic
field when they formed.
•This is first discovered in the
1950s
•Scientists towing magnetic
sensors behind ships found that
the rocky seabed exhibited odd
stripes of magnetization.
•Molten lava proved to hold tiny
mineral grains that acted like
compasses, freely aligning
themselves with the current
field.
• Experts called it paleomagnetism and found
that the tiny compasses were often made of
magnetite, a naturally magnetic mineral.
• Paleomagnetic studies showed that the Earth's
field reversed in a fairly random way and early
patterns were more chaotic.
• Eg. During the age of dinosaurs, no flips
occurred for roughly 35 million years.
• Probably due to early earth’s core being more
unstable.
 Paleoreversal / ‘flips’
• Average interval between flips is approximately 300,000
years
• The last reversal was 78,00 years ago; the Brunhes-
Matuyama Reversal
• In 1995 scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
made the first computer simulation of the geodynamo in
action, including field reversals.
• Dr. Glatzmaier, at Los Alamos, said it showed that the
Earth's solid inner core resisted the flipping because the
field there could not change as rapidly as it did in
the fluid outer core.
• "The reversal starts with a small region that gets larger…
Most of the time they die away, but other times
they continue to grow."
• To date, the simulations of millions of years have
produced more than a dozen flips.
•
• “There have been effects on earth during solar max due to the
influx of the sun on the power grid and the communications, and
if we’re going to head toward a reversal, all of those
problems are going to become more serious.”
• Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that
time--contrary to popular belief--the magnetic field does not
vanish. "It just gets more complicated”.
• Magnetic lines of force near Earth's surface become twisted and
tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places.
• A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a
north pole over Tahiti
• But it's still a planetary magnetic field, and it still protects us from
space radiation and solar storms.
Measuring The Field’s Changes
• The Earth’s magnetic field is
generally becoming weaker.
• a French-Danish team compared
results from 2000 with those from
an American satellite, Magsat, 20
years earlier
• The decline in the field’s strength
suggested that “it might
disappear completely in a
thousand years or so.”
• Some of them have theorized this
is the first stage of a flip
• SWARM project*
• The satellites will adopt orbits
passing over the Earth’s poles.
Swarm A and B will fly side by side,
simultaneously measuring the
magnetic field from positions up to
150 kilometres apart in the east-
west direction near the equator.
• Swarm C will fly higher, remaining at
more than 500 kilometres altitude
throughout the mission.
• Swarm C will give simultaneous
snapshots of the magnetic field over
quite different regions of the Earth,
and impressions of the same region
at different times of day.
 The Reversal In Fiction
• Like any disaster scenario, the
field’s reversal has inspired a
creative outpouring of human
paranoia. Most is pseudoscience.
Lots of ‘Prophecies’
• "The Core," a Hollywood film, gives
a wildly exaggerated portrayal of
what would happen if the field
vanished. People with pacemakers
fall dead. Pigeons fly into people
and windows, the sun burns off
portions of the sea.
 The Orion Prophecy – an
example
• Author Patrick Geryl believes that in the year 2012
the world will suffer a major disaster that will wipe
out billions.
• “In my book I scientifically reveal the millennia-old
codes of the Maya and the Old Egyptians, which
refer to this super-disaster. ”
• “Giant sun-flames will send a gigantic wave of
particles to the earth.
The particles that are spewed out will set the
earth's atmosphere "in flames" and have a real
destructive effect on the Van Allen belts. Because
of the continuous stream of electromagnetism, the
magnetic field of the earth will get overcharged.
Trillions of particles will reach the poles.”
• Not accepted by scientific community.
 Summary – Realistic
•
Outlook?
No correlations in the fossil record between flips
and mass extinctions.
• Homo erectus and our ancestors certainly survived
many previous reversals. The thinking ape is
certainly older than 78,000 years.
• Evidence that field is retained during shift. The
poles move but the protective effects are retained
• BUT Instabilities could harm our sensitive electronic
networks, especially in regions closer to poles eg.
Canada
• Shifts take thousands of years – we could be at the
beginning of one now.
•
References
Amiel, J., 2003. The Core, Paramount.
•  Broad, W.J., 2004. Will Compasses Point South? - NYTimes.com. The New York Times. Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/13/science/13magn.html?
ex=1247457600&en=e8f37e14d213ba16&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=2 [Accessed
January 6, 2010].
•  Eastman, J., 2008. Dr. Dan Lathrop: The study of the Earth’s magnetic field | Black and White. Black and
White - Interviews, Essays and Reports. Available at: http://blackandwhiteprogram.com/interview/dr-dan-
lathrop-the-study-of-the-earths-magnetic-field [Accessed January 6, 2010].
•  European Space Association, 2005. Focus on our magnetic planet. Physorg.com. Available at:
http://www.physorg.com/news2792.html [Accessed January 6, 2010].
•  Geryl, P., 2004. 2012. National Association for Scientific and Cultural Appreciation [NASCA]. Available at:
http://www.nasca.org.uk/Asian_disaster/2012/2012.html [Accessed January 6, 2010].
•  Phillips, D.T., 2003. Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field. Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field. Available at:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/Y2003/29dec_magneticfield.htm [Accessed January 6, 2010].
•  Roach, J., 2004. Why Does Earth's Magnetic Field Flip? National Geographic. Available at:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/09/0927_040927_field_flip.html [Accessed January 6, 2010].
•  Stern, D.D.P., 2008. Origin of The Earth's Magnetism. The Self-Sustaining Dynamo in the Earth's Core.
Available at: http://www.phy6.org/earthmag/dynamos2.htm [Accessed January 6, 2010].