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12 May 2003
I was watching a program on Channel 4 yesterday called "Magnetic Flip"* yesterday, when Mr. Bsag wandered in some time after it had started.
Him: "Oh, so what's the looming disaster that will destroy the Earth this week?" Me: "We're going to lose the Earth's magnetic field, and then all our atmosphere and water will get blown away into space by the solar winds, and we'll all be very dry toast." Him: [Long pause] "Right. What do you want for dinner?"
If you've watched any science programmes at all on TV, you won't be surprised to learn that the whole 'atmosphere being blown away' thing was a bit of a device to get our attention. OK, so there is evidence that it happened to Mars, but the decline in the strength of our own magnetic field seems to have another cause: the polarity is about to flip. This is something that usually happens at fairly regular 200,000 year intervals, but as it's 700,000 years since the last flip, we're a bit overdue for one.
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