By Brett Tingley | Mysterious Universe
New data released by the European Space Agency reveals that Earth’s magnetic poles are weakening much faster than was previously thought. The data was collected by the ESA’s Swarm satellites, a set of three orbital satellites designed to track the strength, direction, and variations of the Earth’s geomagnetic field.
This recent set of measurements reveals that our geomagnetic field is weakening by around 5% a year, which is nearly ten times faster than previous estimates. According to the press release by the ESA, the data shows that the field is weakening faster in some places than others:
It shows clearly that the field has weakened by about 3.5% at high latitudes over North America, while it has strengthened about 2% over Asia. The region where the field is at its weakest – the South Atlantic Anomaly – has moved steadily westward and weakened further by about 2%.
This new data might foreshadow a coming reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles, an event thought to occur around every 100,00 years, with the last reversal happening during the human Stone Age. While some Doomsday sayers believe that this magnetic reversal could mark the end of life on Earth, the consensus among geoscientists is that the worst effect could be the re-labeling all of Earth’s compasses.
Calculations of the loss of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars, resulting from scavenging of ions by the solar wind, indicate that the dissipation of the magnetic field of Mars caused a near total loss of its atmosphere. Imagine the devastation if it happens on earth
will we all fall off so ?
We will all be floating!!! 😛