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Thoughts on Pole

Reversal and the

Wandering Magnetic

North

The North and South Poles are swapping
places. Hmmmm…

I guess I’m okay with it as long as my
Trailer Trash magnet still sticks to the
fridge door.
For years scientists have been studying something called the
We might need sun block with a UV South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA). This is the spot on the Earth
500,000 rating since the cosmic rays are where the magnetic field is the weakest. Satellites flying over
going to come on down like contestants this area have been bombarded with radiation and one or two
on The Price is Right. have sustained permanent damage and given up the ghost
because of it. Down here on Earth, the SAA, as the hip scientists
It turns out that Pete Townsend, the genius lyricist and proto- call it, has recently split into two lobes and no one seems to
metal guitar shredder anticipated the wandering North Pole as think this is a good thing, though the implications are being
far back as 1966. In the early Who hit ‘Substitute’ Townsend
wrote (and Roger Daltrey sang) “The north side of my town downplayed by the same government that said smoking was not
faced east, and the east was facing south”. How else to explain harmful, everyone could stand 50 chest x-rays a year, and paper-
this burst of lyrical enigma except by acknowledging that Pete thin masks made of … paper could prevent the spread of Covid.
somehow recognized that the North Pole was rapidly heading for Uh huh, right.
Siberia and points south. I mean, really. Otherwise, the lyrics are
just gibberish, right? So, what’s the big deal, you ask? Well, the magnetic field, which
extends thousands of miles into space, interacts with charged
A cursory search turns up information that the Earth’s magnetic particles and forms the magnetosphere, which deflects much of
poles swap every 700,000 years or so and it’s been 780,000 the solar winds thereby shielding us from solar radiation. You
know, that stuff that makes third eyeballs
pop out in frog foreheads, burns that lush
mane of hair off your dome and kicks out
genetic mutants like Donald Trump and
Pee Wee Herman? The prevailing science
indicates during the pole swap the magnetic
field weakens to nearly nothing and cosmic
rays will actually exceed the amount of spam
in your in-box. Take a minute and imagine
what the folks at the mall, or those rubes in
Congress, or even your workplace would look
like if the magnetosphere quit doing its job so
diligently. Yeah, that’s right. They would all
since it last took place. The common thinking by those who get look pretty much the way they look right now.
paid to think about these things is that it takes around 20,000
years for the pole-swap process to complete. That concept may Okay then, there’s nothing to worry about. If your isogonic chart
be evolving in light of the alarming news that our magnetic field needs to be updated every two weeks, so be it. We surveyors
has weakened by some 7% over the past 200 years and new aren’t exactly relying on our compasses anymore. So what if you
geomagnetic studies are revealing that the swap might happen are driving straight into the setting sun and your car’s compass
much faster, say just a few thousand years. And don’t forget, says you are headed south? As long as Google Maps still works,
the speed at which the North Pole is moving is now upwards this is a non-problem. Slather on some more sun block and get
of 30 miles a year. That’s faster than Joe Biden’s thought to work. Private pilots who line their aircraft up on the runway
processes. Whale, sea turtle and bird brains all seem to have and align their compasses may wonder how to synchronize
built-in compasses that allows them to navigate long distances something that won’t stop spinning. And they may end up in
and still come back home to mate. Whale migrations might be a Wisconsin rather than Wendover, but that’s really neither here
problem when they start showing up in places like Baltimore and nor there. No really, Wisconsin and Wendover aren’t either here
Sacramento hoping to get lucky and asking for directions to a or there. Think about it.
Cetacean night club. Could whales start evolving thumbs so as to
hold on to maps? I wonder.
30 The Nevada Traverse Vol.49, No.2, 2022