The Earth and Suns Magnetic Fields are Constantly Changing

Summary: The Earths Magnetic Field is changing forcing an international airport to change its Runways. The Suns Magnetic field is predicted by NASA to flip in 2012, completely, NASA says the Earths has flipped in the past and could flip again.

The Earths Magnetic Field Shifting forces Airport Runway Change

According to  Wynne Parry at Livesc

ience (click here to read their article at their site) and supported by the Tampa Bay International airport :

The magnetic north pole is currently hovering over the North Sea and moving toward Siberia. This means two Florida airports are renumbering their runways.

Runways are designated according to the points on a compass, and the drifting magnetic north means that they, periodically, need to be renamed.

"Recently, the drift has caused our runways' orientations to be closer to the next increment on the magnetic compass," Tampa International Airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan told LiveScience in an e-mail.

The Earth and Suns Magnetic Fields are Constantly Changing

OK, not only that but according to NASA the Suns Magnetic Field is expected to flip in 2012. The North pole is now in the south but is going to flip back to the North:

The Suns Magnetic field is expected to completley flip in 2012 according to NASA (NO BS it does this in cycles).

According to NASA "The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse ".

Read the story yourself on the NASA website at:at http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast15feb_1/

The Earths Magnetic Field Shifting forces Airport Runway Change – But could the entire magnetic field flip again, as it has in the past,?The Earths magnetic field is changing that is undeniable – but What would happen if the magnetic field of the Earth suddenly changed?

Here is the answer again from our friends at NASA at this link

If the magnetic field of the Earth suddenly changed, and this DOES happen naturally every 250,000 years or so, the consequences would be fascinating. For life, we can see from the fossil record that the past field changes had no significant effect on living organisms. This is most curious because the field reversal ( North magnetic pole shifting to antarctica and the South magnetic pole shifting to the arctic region in the Northern Hemisphere) one might expect the field to go to zero strength for a century or so. This would let cosmic rays freely penetrate to the Earth's surface and cause mutations. This seems not to have had much effect in the past, so we probably don't really know what is going on during these field reversals. There have been a dozen of them over the last few million years, documented in the rock which has emerged and solidified along the mid-Atlantic Ridge where continental plates are slowly separating. These epochs form parallel bands all long the ridge where the rock has stored a fossilized image of the local orientation of the Earth's magnetic field for the last few million years.

Magnetic field wandering would let the aurora borealis occur at any latitude, but other than that there would be no noticeable effects other than changes in the amount of cosmic rays that penetrate to the ground. Even this effect is minimal because we can visit the Arctic and Antarctic and only receive a slight increase in cosmic rays. So long as the strength of the field remains high during this field wandering event, the effects should be pretty benign.The Earth's magnetic field is believed to be generated by the rotation of the Earth's molten iron-nickel core. The period of field reversal is determined by the rotation rate of the core and its electrical conductivity. If you were to change either one of these, the field orientation, strength and '250,000 year cycle' would be increased or decreased.

We also know from studies of the Sun's magnetic dynamo, that this phenomenon can change abruptly as it did during the 'Little Ice Age' on the Earth a few hundred years ago. There were no sunspots observed on the Sun for 50 years or so, then rather abruptly, the familiar 11-year cycle started-up over the course of a few decades. A similar 'chaotic' phenomenon may occur with the Earth 'suddenly' loosing its magnetic field for a few million years. Already, geophysicists have begun to notice a decline in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field, suggesting that the next field reversal epoch may be about to start. It may, however, take a long time to get here, and we don't really know if the decline is just a natural, ripple, or the portend of something far more sinister.

Here are more details on the Magnetic pole shift going on in the Earth from the LiveScience Article

The magnetic poles don't line up with the geographic ones, and the difference between them is an angle called declination. As if this wasn't enough of a nuisance for navigators, the Earth's magnetic field drifts, causing the angle of declination to change over time.

In fact, it drifts about one-fifth of a degree a year at lower latitudes, such as Florida. "So that means if you wait five years, the compass will be off by one degree," Love said.

For long-distance air travel, an error of only a couple of degrees could translate to arriving in the wrong airport, Love said. [5 Real Hazards of Air Travel]

Declination also varies depending on location. At high latitudes, it tends to become larger, and a compass becomes increasingly unreliable. If you were to stand over a magnetic pole, and tried to use your compass, it would not know where to point, Love said. Longitude also factors in.

As the patterns of motion of the molten iron in the Earth's core changes, so does the shape of the magnetic field, he said.

Right now, the magnetic north pole, where the field is vertical, is located at 84.97 degrees North and 132.35 degrees West, above the North Sea and drifting generally north-northwest toward Siberia at about 55 kilometers (34.2 miles) per year, according to Love.

What's going on in Florida?

Travelers have struggled with the complexity of navigating by compass for centuries, and modern American travelers are no exception.

Runways are designated according to the points on a compass, and the drifting magnetic north means that they, periodically, need to be renamed.

"Recently, the drift has caused our runways' orientations to be closer to the next increment on the magnetic compass," Tampa International Airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan told LiveScience in an e-mail.

For example, the west parallel runway, which was named 36Left -18Right to designate compass points of 360 degrees and 180 degrees, is being renamed to 1Left – 19Right, to indicate 10 degrees and 190 degrees, since the runway designations are separated into 10-degree increments.

Adjustments to runways like this and to navigational aids are ongoing, according to Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's Southern Region. A third airport is scheduled to rename its runways in October; however, the changes aren't necessary for all airports in the Tampa Bay area, she said.

Every five years, federal agencies tabulate and publish a value called magnetic variation, which varies by location. Similar to declination, it correlates true direction to the magnetic compass readings needed for navigation.

These values are used to update navigational aids, such as instrument landing systems and beacons, she said. If there is a change of more than three degrees at any given airport, then runways need to be renumbered, as is happening at the Florida airports, Bergen said.

While aviation in the United States still relies on ground-based radar, which is calibrated to the local magnetic variation, it is moving toward a satellite-based system.

"Runways are still aligned toward magnetic poles. That's not going to change," she said.

A Much Bigger Change?

The same forces that cause the magnetic poles to drift can also cause a more dramatic change by switching the magnetic north pole to magnetic south pole, and vice versa, Love said.

In fact, the physics behind the activity in the Earth's core could just as easily generate a polarity opposite of what exists today, he said.

The poles last reversed themselves 780,000 years ago, and the reversals typically take 10,000 years or more to happen.

"In terms of what kind of havoc it could wreak or effects on humankind, we can't really say because we haven't experienced it," he said. "I don't think it will be the end of the world."

OK thats it for The Earth and Suns Magnetic Fields are Constantly Changing Article.

Interesting stuff huh?

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