Current Time On The Rock

Friday, December 17, 2010

"Newfoundland"

I've been here five years now this past June. If you had of said 5 and a half years ago that I would be living in Newfoundland I would have thought you were missing your boat! ; )



I grew up in North Eastern Nova Scotia, later moved to North Eastern British Columbia and now to Eastern Newfoundland. My internal compass seems to have a magnetic east. I then began wondering after watching a program on discovery last evening about the changing of the poles' magnetic fields. There is a point when they will reverse and will become chaotic with no distinct magnetic poles and supposedly it is long overdo and happens every so many , many, many years (can't you see I don't remember how many). I also learned that a million earths could fit in the sun and started to feel very small. So back to earth so to speak. How close are we I wonder to the change in magnetic fileds around our earth. The chaotic (i use this term loosely as I am sure they will align in most likely some organised state) fields of magnetism are transient once they do change and the poles get their magnetism back eventually. Finding magnetic north during this time may be very difficult. But more than that I wonder what other things would be affected? What about human behaviors? What about other animal behaviors?  What about my internal compass? What about compasses in general. How will we navigate? I hope my internal compass switches to something southerly. : 0

3 comments:

Sean Dawe said...

Stan: Considering that it's probably warmer here in NL than it is in Florida or other southerly climes, I thinking the compass is already switching!! Stick around here for a few years and we'll be a balmy tropical island. I can live with that!!

Tony said...

Stan, we may not have to worry about navigation, we may have to worry about being fried by radiation coming from the sun and elsewhere without the protective field of earth's magnetism.

The magnetic pole is moving about 50 kms per year towards Siberia and its movement is speeding up. Good thing is we won't have to worry about it in our lifetime.

Tony :-)

Stan Mac Kenzie said...

Sounds good to me Sean.

Yes Tony we should be safe. I know we have lots of time. Hopefully humans won't do something stupid in the meantime ;)

We seem to have a tendency to be destructive on our own without natural forces exerting their own energies.