I'm taking a Geology class, and I recently asked this question to my Prof. He told me it's hard to tell since humans have never been around to witness this event. However, he does assume it would be catastrophic. I don't know what to personally believe, but that's what he told me.

he does assume it would be catastrophic

Assume the worst with no evidence (or theory.)

Shouldn't you assume that nothing would happen, since that's what you have evidence for?

It's just an assumption. He didn't say we have evidence for it, nor that it's true. There's nothing wrong with assuming. I'm sure he would want to test his assumption, but we can't test it. It's just what he thinks, there's nothing wrong with that.

Had a GEO professor who said it wouldn't make the slightest difference, aside from society having to reconfigure it's directional systems. Don't know what to believe. I don't think anyone really knows.

Yea I know, and I don't think anyone will know. We weren't around long enough to know.

Amount of catastrophic stuff lately? Only thing that's any bit "new" in the last 25 years is what's going on at Fukashima. Every generation thinks it is on the brink. And with the internet, our generation gets to see A LOT of evidence to back up the idea. Hurricanes/ floods/ famine/ politics do not equal pole shift.

A pole shift would take all those events and magnify them thousands of times. Our gravity is effected greatly by our rotational spin. If all of a sudden that wobbles and the poles flip, imagine what all the mass of the planet would do? This may be why there are tons of ancient cave systems theorized to have been used as cities in the past.

I wonder how the oceans of the world will react to it? I imagine a long slow push all in one direction and oceans swamping through coastlines and possibly over mountain ranges. Could make for a great movie!

[deleted]

Good Point. I believe there is an argument for the possibility of a violent pole flip as the pole shifts farther and farther out. Best analogy is how a spinning top acts, espescially the kind that flip themselves up on to their handle and then keep spinning.

[deleted]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift_hypothesis

The most significant aspect of a pole shift is the monumental movement of water, and a complete submersion of the new equator. Incidentally, I am not talking about magnetic pole shift (which is a completely different issue) but the movement of the North and South poles to a different location on the Earth's crust.

You are presumably aware that the earth is not a true sphere, but an oblate spheroid. Because the earth spins on its Polar axis at about 1000mph, the earth bulges significantly at the equator (and flattens at the poles). The result is that the circumference of the earth at the equator is some 40km greater than the circumference around the poles.

When the poles shift, so does the equator, and so does the bulge! The first thing to move is water - millions of cubic kilometres of it - seeking out the new equator like a spirit level.

What happens is that landmasses on the new equator that were comfortably above sea level before the pole shift, are suddenly hundreds, even thousands of metres below sea-level in a matter of hours. The opposite is true for the old (current) equator - land masses rise out the sea.

Everybody else can expect severe (albeit less dramatic) flooding in all coastal and low lying areas across the globe. Billions of humans (and other animals) will drown in a matter of hours.

I think we are talking about the magnetic poles... You have any idea what it would take to alter the spin of the earth?

The magnetic poles "shift" the whole time without causing any serious problems. Magnetic North has meandered for hundred of miles around Northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean since scientists started to measure it.

The only meaningful pole shift would be of the geographic poles. It would involve enormous forces, but this would not necessarily entail an altering of the spin of the earth, merely crustal displacement. The mantle and core would carrying on spinning on the same axis as before.

Geographic poles? What are you talking about? Do you mean the current geographic poles, right now, moving? Like, the earth tilting? Or do you mean the land mass physically moving to a different location? Either way, what you're talking about is damn near impossible. The forces it would take to accomplish that would be unimaginable. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.

It has happened before, it will happen again. You are aware that the earth currently spins on an axial tilt of 23 degrees off vertical (in relation to celestial north)? It wasn't always that way.

I wouldn't expect a magnetic pole shift to effect much more than birds and compasses.

It depends on the solar weather during the actual flip. Right now our magnetic field deflects and allows some energized particles to funnel down at the poles (creating auroras). During the flip, the poles will travel across the equator. A direct, head-on blast of energized particles, even from a relatively weak and common flare could do damage to electronics on the ground and in orbit.

Source: pure speculation

Are you talking about a magnetic pole shift/reversal http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/09/no-a-pole-shift-wont-cause-global-superstorms/#.Ul1nmBDBPaE

or an actual crustal displacement event. http://www.crystalinks.com/crustal.html

Waves man, lots of ocean sized waves.

Compasses (both mechanical and biological) stop working as the magnetic field becomes weaker, then reverse entirely as it becomes stronger in the opposite direction.

During the period of weakening, radiation from the sun is not blocked as effectively by our magnetic field. Skin cancer rates will go up, but not by an extreme or particularly dangerous amount. Electronics might be more likely to be affected by atmospheric radiation, but that's not a certainty.

Over time things will go back to normal, except compasses will point backwards and the migratory habits of birds will have changed. They will either have evolved new behaviors to fly "north" for the winter, or they will have changed physically to not need to migrate.

It depends if its a magnetic pole flip or a crustal displacement. Magnetic pole i wouldnt expect serious ELE type events apart from radiation risks and effects until it restabilizes but a crustal displacement (the shell moving round the yolk) is obviously going to kick off mega-earthquakes, mega-tsunamis and mega-volcanos all at once... bad news for anything living near sea level, lowlands or rivers.

The magnetic pole has traveled all throughout history, and still travels today. A pole reversal takes thousands and thousands of years. I'm on my phone so I don't have any journal articles, but my advisor's PhD is in geophysics and paleoclimate in regards to geomagnetic excursions. For what it's worth, my masters in geology is in paleoclimate based on ancient lake deposits so I'm not extremely versed in magnetics, but I did ask him about pole reversals.

Earth in Upheaval by Immanuel Velikovsky. Fascinating read on the possibility of catastrophic pole reversals in recorded history. It includes hundreds of citations from ancient texts. The majority of mainstream scientists of the time, and even today, consider his research worthless but this is /r/conspiracy and they did conspire to prevent him from even publishing many of his works.

I think you're looking for this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

it means this

http://www.icompositions.com/music/song.php?sid=185851

I kind of see it like a washing machine. When your washing a bunch or towels or a sheet and it gets balled to one side you get that wiggle that grows into a god forsaken mini earthquake. But, then you open the lid, disperse the sheet or towel more evenly, hit start, and more or less, the ride is smooth, until it is not again.

Like Pangaea (Pangæa).

I think that we've been through the ride a few times over the course of history. That that the continents are shifting for "most efficient spin". Basically they are balancing themselves out for a smooth ride, and each time there is a build up of enough energy to destabilize and cause another shift. Think about putting a rubber band around a pen and twisting it up and then letting it go, the recoil will store enough energy to spin the pin back around the opposite direction but with less energy, the waves of energy become smaller and smaller. The pole flipping, in my theory, works the same way, less and less energy at each switch, less and less destruction after billions of years. Eventually the piles will find their balance, but before they do, there will be a back and forth and the balance ebbs and flows.

You won't notice it, if it happens. The magnetic polarity of the planet will flip, and compass needles will start pointing the opposite way (eventually, when the shift settles down). But for us it will be a non-event.

Nothing. Pole shifts are not instant but rather happen gradually over many many years.

[deleted]

We 100% would not experience 3 days of darkness if a poleshift really did happen. That would require the Earth to stop spinning (and even then only half the Earth would be dark), which would be completely impossible.

[deleted]

OK then, 99.9999999%. Physics is pretty consistent, and inertia is well understood. The amount of energy it would take to stop the Earth spinning in a short amount of time would be incredibly huge. Far more than just a weak magnetic field changing direction.

But if the magnetic field is gone, what does that say about the core of the earth? What does that mean for the way the earth interacts energy with other planets/sun? Yes, electromagnet force is the weakest of all the forces, but ever heard of the electrical universe theory? And what does it mean for our personal electromagnetic fields? Which possibly communicate via the earths electromagnetic field.

There's more questions. It's funny how science can seem like it knows all. It doesn't. No one knows how an absent field will effect the earth. Sure you can speculate based on past flips that humans weren't around for. But, again, it's all based on our observances within our lifetimes/man kinds life times. Just because something is produced in a lab, under controlled conditions, doesn't mean you'll explain all phenomena that's similar or pertaining.

I agree with you, but still, I'm not going to act like we know anything. I think we could "research" for millions of years and not even be close to answering this pole flip question without inaccuracy.

I agree that not everything is known, and there would almost certainly be surprises that we didn't expect if something happened to the magnetic field, but someone claiming the Earth would stop spinning is ridiculous. There are things which can be speculated, and there are things that are known.

Sure, people can say "there's always a chance", or "we can never know for sure" but that doesn't mean it would happen. According to quantum physics, your computer could vanish from in front of you you right now and appear at the other side of the universe completely intact, atom by atom. Does that mean it will happen? of course not, unless you have a few hundred trillion years to spare to wait for the tiny chance it could happen.

Add to the amazing unlikeness the fact that a pole shift has happened before, as many geological surveys have found, yet the earth has always spun at roughly the same speed through them all, and it shows that we can be very confident, as close to certain as is possible even, that it won't happen.

You're 100% correct, hahah.

But I mean, how would the 3 days of darkness thing work if it wasn't an actuality. Because, I'm on your side and don't see how darkness is possible due to a pole flip. However, google search 3 days of darkness pole flip and you get a bunch of results. I don't support google search results as the answer, but how did these two ideas even become tied together. Cause like you said, it doesn't make sense based on the common knowledge.

I really don't know how someone could have connected them. But at the risk of being down-voted, some conspiracy theories are more in the realms of Hollywood fiction than reality, and there's always someone out there who'll believe it. I mean, there's still people who seriously believe the Earth is flat, something that was proven wrong thousands of years ago, and people who think we're ruled by reptilian overlords, so maybe this is one of the more sane theories....

hahah, assuming such a theory exists as a sane one in this society. You really wonder when you hear some people defend the moon hoax though. It's like...dude. Commercial space flights are a real thing. Come back to reality.

That is inaccurate. There are several storylines that may or may not happen.

It is unknown what will whipe out electricity. Ones say it will be russian nuclear weapons all going off at once in chech coal (?) mines (because they are losing), causing massive earthquakes, change of earths axis, pole-shift and through that the end of electricity.

Others are reporting that comet ISON, or fragments of it, will impact on earth (there are several perspectives about this, one includes the nazis who live in hollow-earth ... quite fascinating), causing the earth to crack, axis change, pole shift.

You should stick to Alois Irlmaier ... and not youtube.

edit: after reading this ... i have not enough understanding about physics to tell what could/could not whipe out electricity, but the chance of it happening seems, considering current events in our time-line, very likely.

A significant loss in gravity.

Source please, you piqued my interest.

Gravity is due to mass and mass alone.

Good Point. I believe there is an argument for the possibility of a violent pole flip as the pole shifts farther and farther out. Best analogy is how a spinning top acts, espescially the kind that flip themselves up on to their handle and then keep spinning.