Short Stuff: Magnetic Pole Switcheroo | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

[Music]. hey and welcome to the short stuff the. whole gang's here even in spirit so. let's go stuff you should. know uh yeah you put this one together. this is a good one we're talking about. uh the magnetic field and specifically. the switching of Earth's magnetic. pole and I guess we should just start. talking about what the magnetic field of. the earth is right yeah you kind of. can't really get past that one because.

um apparently it seems to be fairly. peculiar to Earth to have a really solid. inner core made of I think iron and. nickel and that um that is basically. bathed in a bath of molten outer core MH. and because that molten outer core is. constantly roing and convecting and. doing all sorts of crazy motions it. actually produces a Dynamo effect or a. magnetic field is generated that inner. core essentially becomes a giant bar. magnet with a North Soul North Pole in a.

South Pole yeah and that that magnetic. field radiates from the the center of. the earth outward into outer space and. it does some pretty cool stuff one it. prevents um high energy particles that. are bombarding Earth at all time from. reaching Earth generally and um killing. us just shooting right through your. throat and out the other side so life. can exist on Earth and then less um. importantly but more beautifully also. creates the Aurora.

M and also why I wear a Kevlar. turtleneck actually not a Dicky really. because it gets warm in the summer yeah. that's. smart uh so you've got that uh bipolar. core uh you know we have the North Pole. and the South Pole geographically like. we know where those are we've mapped. those out they're great everyone loves. them but they really have nothing to do. with the actual magnetic poles of the. earth two different things uh the.

Earth's poles as we will see they move. around a lot because of that molten core. is unstable and uh it it moves that that. roing sort of molten uh Gunk you were. talking about is weaker in some places. it's stronger in some places and you. know you you kind of likened it to a pot. of water like bubbling and the bubbles. like pop and Fade Away uh same thing is. going on there that creates instability. and sort of just movement yeah yeah so.

that suffice to say that the the Earth's. magnetic field is not constantly stable. it's constantly changing and since some. spots are weaker than other spots that. means the poles can actually move around. and they do they wander about the these. it's called. excursions and they can move all over. the place and as a matter of fact when. they what seems to pass what seems to be. a threshold they flip and all of a. sudden the South Pole is at the. geographical North Pole area and the.

North Pole is down in Antarctica. somewhere and it happens and uh we've. just recently learned about this kind of. thing yeah it's called polarity reversal. uh there's some disagreement among the. scientific Community about uh how often. this happens how quickly it happens uh. there was a study in 2020 from uh the. scrips oceanographic Institute in San. Diego San Diego right yeah the s said SD.

I didn't think it was South Dakota. definitely. not uh or Southern Durham North Carolina. it could have been that one it's. definitely not South Dakota though I'll. tell you that yeah so they had a new. model based on 100,000 years worth of. data and they said actually these poles. are wandering like a lot it's a real. Walkabout they're wandering about 10. degrees a year uh that is equal to the. distance between Atlanta and Toronto or. for Aussie friends Brisbane and.

Melbourne mhm uh or if you're in London. those are the three places that listen. to us basically sure Canada Australia. and the UK or London and Prague and that. is about 10 times what scientists. thought before this study came out yeah. the pole can wander that far in a year a. year you just like when you hear about. this you're like okay that's that's. weird I didn't know they could move. maybe it just kind of gyrates a little. bit no it can travel from Toronto to. Atlanta in a year and back and it. wanders all over the place it's not like. it follows like a set line because again.

the the molten inner or outer core it's. roiling it looks probably a lot like the. surface of the Sun and so all the little. spots and weird like areas and. everything that's where the kind of like. the the magnetic poles actually travel. like down a Plinko set essentially but a. severe Plinko set if you can wrap your. mind around that kind of thing all right. well I'm going to wrap my mind around it. and we're going to take a break and then. I'm going to unwrap my mind right after. this.

[Music]. this uh all right so we were talking. about this thing is the it's really. hauling these poles are moving around uh. and they can actually flip and the last.

time that happened was about 42,000. years ago and what's called the uh lamp. I guess mhm the lamp Excursion great. band name yeah and this was the lava. flow in France of which it was named. after uh because of the fossil record I. guess uh that we discovered in the. 1960s and during this excursion the. North Pole went across North America. then said all right now I'm going to. drop down into the Pacific or through. the Pacific to Antarctica and then I'm.

the North Pole by the way and I'm going. to stay there in Antarctica for about. 400 years and then I'm going to go back. up through the Indian Ocean to the. actual geographical North Pole yeah. roughly that area back to generally. where the north Magnetic North Pole. typically is right yeah that's really. fast 400 years on a geological time. scale is like oh yeah a blink is is is. too slow as a description or analogy um. and so the the the lampus Excursion.

seems to have had some pretty. significant effects on the planet um. that 42,000 years ago coincides with a. bunch of weird stuff that happened on. Earth um there was a lot of glaciers. that expanded and all sorts of. surprising places the wind patterns. changed globally um the megap a lot of. megap species disappeared from the. fossil records and so too did the. Neanderthals that's right it was a. really really significant period of like.

surprising and kind of dismal activity. in in Earth's um history and they have. traced this to basically a weakening of. the magnetic field that it's probable. the magnetic field became very weak and. that allowed the the poles to flip very. quickly and that it wasn't necessarily. the poles flipping that caused all of. this weird stuff to happen but that the. magnetic field being weakened probably. also let this the this weird stuff. happening so the reversal of polarity.

was a symptom just like say um The. Disappearance of the neander tals was or. the change in wiim patterns where they. were all symptoms of this weakened. magnetic field around Earth yeah you. talked about it you know sort of acting. like a force field against that particle. bombardment uh that probably weakened it. enough that they were bombarded uh the. ozone layer was damaged a lot of UV. light is just baking the Earth and it. was just bad uh bad enough where. scientists obviously are like well when. when is this going to happen again cuz.

we're in store for something uh pretty. rough and what they've kind of come out. with was a we're not sure exactly when. it's going to happen again uh because. you can't look back I think you. mentioned earlier it doesn't necessarily. happen in a in a pattern that you can. count on yeah doesn't seem to yeah so. they can't say like all right well. here's when it's going to happen again. but they do think this was a a really. the lamp Excursion was sort of a rare. fast thing and uh if if it does happen. again it'll probably be over the order.

of uh thousands of years yeah and it's. not going to be the kind of thing like. most of the other times it happened it. was over a much slower time period the. lamp was just so fast it wrecked. everything and it and it probably. wouldn't be that bad if it happened. again because it would be on a much. slower you know thousands and thousands. of years timeline yeah I mean tens of. thousands of years versus hundreds of. years that's pretty significant as far. as differences go right and if the. sounds kind of like a if it rings a bell.

we talked a little bit about this in the. plate tectonics episode where like the. magnetic striping at the bottom of the. sea is basically uh lava flows recording. reversals and polarity of Earth's poles. this is very much what we're talking. about so because they think it happens. over you know tens of thousands of years. and if you look back in the fossil. record at other times that coincide with. polarity reversals there doesn't seem to. have been anywhere near the kind of C. catastrophic events that came from the.

lamp Excursion um they're they're not. particularly worried about it but we do. know that if it did happen on like a. normal slow time scale we'd still have. to adapt because a lot of our technology. relies on on a stable magnetic field. yeah I mean they have to take that stuff. into account like when they look at the. fossil record maybe not much of anything. happened because they weren't using. satellites and they you know didn't have. things floating around in space but uh. there's an area called the South.

Atlantic uh anomaly between South. America and South Africa where there is. a a weaker magnetic field than Elsewhere. on Earth and when satellites and stuff. go through there in spacecraft there are. issues they're like can you hear me ex. are you still there uh and they say in. space no one can hear you. scream name that movie uh Space. Balls. exactly uh so they that's an example of.

like what can happen with a just a. somewhat weaker magnetic field um so. they would have to account for that. stuff ahead of time know it's coming and. and account for it I think there would. be some economic impact but for sure I. mean I think uh who was at the Cambridge. Center for risk studies uh said that it. could be like a A6 to 42 billion cost. for the United States which honestly. this chump change when you look at you. know budgets of the United States buddy.

that's a day yeah a day so it's it's not. like. uh I mean that's a lot of money. obviously but it's not like that would. wreck the American economy or anything. it depends on how long it went on for. you know well yeah I guess so I mean if. they didn't get up and running within a. few hours that could be you know it. could add. up it could add up speaking of knowing. it's coming I want to go ahead and stem. the tide of emails I know that Chuck was. talking about alien by the way everyone. how could Josh Space Balls uh one other.

thing Chuck because The Disappearance of. the neander Halls coincides with the the. weakening of the magnesphere and. probably bombardment of UV radiation and. and ions yeah you may be right that the. Neanderthals really did. melt you might be on to something man. that's an old one you got anything else. I got nothing else JM uh well then short. stuff is. [Music]. out stuff you should know is a. production of iHeart radio for more.

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