Read the rest here

Was this a scientest doing a study on the mind altering effects of drugs?
That sounds like madness...

Ah after reading the rest it sounds like it has to do with the earth not being in a perfect orbit.

I havent' read the artical yet. But yes the magnetic poles do wander some and it also switches polarity every once in a while. Meaning that a compass would point the wrong way. You can use magnetostratigraphy to determine sea floor spreading rates.

note: I've had classes on this stuff.

Another side note to that. I work in the Aviation industry, for the airlines as a Maintenance Tech. We have to check the compasses on the aircraft every so often by whats called a compass swing. we take the aircraft out and turn it in all directions with something called a compass rose. Now this may sound boring so let me finish.

When you take off from any airport, the runway has a big number painted on it. That number is its compass heading. Runway 09 is actually 90 degrees from north, 18 is 180 degrees from north or in this case now, due south. When magnetic north pole changes from time to time like it does, airports have to take measurements and recalibrate the runways. meaning if it changes enough, runway 09 which is 90 degrees may be renumbered to say 10, or 100 degrees.

Interesting huh....

As a quick question, do you people read long posts ??

Just curious.

The wobble referred to earlier is called Chandler's wobble. The Earth does not rotate perfectly about its axis. Much like a top that slowly degrades in its gyroscopic balance, the Earth shimmies a bit around it axis. The approximate period of this wobble is 1.2 years.


There are some that believe the Earth could shift on its axis if a strong enough gravitic force was introduced ( say a large comet or small star on very long elliptical orbit through our solar system).

Does that have effect on the magnetic poles though?
Reason I ask is I have read a bit in my classes about the Earth's wobble and how it affects climate, but I never heard it with magnetic poles.
The way I see it affecting magnetic poles (if it does) is that this magnetism comes from the core or mantle and if this "wobble" is actually the crust of the Earth sliding over the liquid layer (mantle). Much like you can slide your hand over a round object like a billiards ball. That would cause a shift in the pole on the surface, although the hot spots in the mantle (known to be stationary) havent' moved so therefore the mantle's magnetic field hasn't changed. But it appears it has on land.
Thats a little confusing, read it a couple times if you are confused. If you are still confused post back and I'll see if I can explain it a different way (If I can think of a different way).

yes, most of the time. But the poster and the subject do play a role in whether I read it or not.

Ok fair enough SNGX1275, Did you read my post ??

Yes I did. Learned something from it too. I did not know what those numbers stood for.

I'll post back later with more info on the "wandering pole"

oh, and boeing, yes I read longer posts Thanks for the info!

What do the numbers at the end of the runways at airports mean?
Only kidding I too read longer posts (as long as they aren't in dOOdZspeek...)
Thanks for that interesting fact boeing...

Yes. If the thread interests me, I read it all.
as these conversations get dragged out over day, or weeks, sometimes i goback and reread parts (depends if I can follow the gist of the thread from what was quoted)
Keep going!

there are also the 23,000 year, and 100,000 year wobbles
has to do with the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun
Ice ages, etc. etc.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/students/iceage/iceage2.htm
These are a little slow to effect airplanes.

Yeah I don't think there where many planes flying back then ?

But I could be wrong.

I don't think it actually cools to solidify, its more of just the insane pressure down that deep doesn't allow material to be liquid.

And didn't I mention something (several posts up) about how north and south flip, I believe I even said that your compass would point the wrong way

And T-Shirt - There are small wobbles inside of larger wobbles. I wrote a paper once on one of those that creates whats called a Milankovitch Cycle. Its kind of complex to explain so if anyone is interested do a google search and read a few links, cause its hard to understand the first time you read.

This isn't quite what you are talking about, but speaking of magnetic poles...

I read awhile back that every so often in the span of many, many tens of thousands of years, the Earth is supposed to "flip" it's magnetic poles. This is called "polar shifting" and supposedly can be quite dangerous to living organisms because the magnetic field that surrounds Earth is rendered useless for a span of days to years.

If this wobbling you are talking about is a prelude to something like that, then you might want to put some sunscreen on

Well it was what we were talking about, we just got sidetracked. If you look at my first post in this thread:
I dont know if I believe that about harmful to organisms. It has always changed (polar reversals) and we are here, evolutionary thinking says we came from more primitive life forms. They survived through these "flips".