Does anybody know of any credible resources for information about magnetic field reversal (specifically in Earth)?
Are you a university student? Try web of science (or for some reason pubmed occasionally works for physics). Alternatively scholar.google.com (though you probably still need to be a uni student to read anything). This will give you the lastest papers and some review articles provide warm up material. Failing that a regular google search will do but look for things ending .edu or .ac.xx (where xx is probably a country you've heard of), then cross reference the web page owners with papers on scholar.google.com. This is probably the best way to go about it if you just want background.
Depends what you mean by "credible". There are plenty of books dealing with ancient pole shifts that deal with beginnings of civilization etc, but are not of the scientifically oriented variety, but rather challenge orthodox scientific theory. I suppose that makes such books incredible. Author Ian Lawton covers it a fair bit in "Genesis Unveiled" where he uses known scientific and geologically validated data to ultimately propose a possibility. The data is sound, but he speculates on what it could mean.
I watched a long, very informative special on this, I think it was on the National Geographic special. Here are the facts: 1. The magnetic poles are not static, but constantly moving about and changing in intensity. 2. In the last 50 years the Earth's magnetic shield has lost 10% of it's energy (a huge loss, but not unprecendented). 3. Once every 200,000 years or so the Earth's magnetic pole reverses, and it's overdue for another. 4. Scientists have discovered that the pole reversal happens extremely fast in geologic time, within just a few years or decades. 5. Before the poles reverse, their field decreases in energy as is now happening. Then the magnetic pole breaks up into smaller magnetic fields which move around. When this happens "magnetic north" will mean nothing. This is only a brief period (a decade or less). Then the pole coalesces again in a reverse position. 6. Scientists are not sure what causes this, but know that changes in the inner molten metal core (nickel I believe) of the Earth, cause the magnetic field to fluxuate. 7. Scientists are pretty much in agreement that we have already entered the process of pole reversal and it should speed up very soon. 8. Scientists are unsure of what the effects might be on the planet and it's residents, but the documentary tended to downplay this as being too significant, except to navigation, but of course no one uses compasses for that now anyway. 9. The sun's polarity changes every 11 years, and now that we've observed it happening we understand more what happens when the Earth's polarity changes (see quote). More info here: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience.html
does this mean no more nl5 ?http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1215_051215_north_pole.html
One piece of evidence that suggests pole reversal is the set of magnetic field polarization data found in core samples taken in the Atlantic Rift Zone where a steady flow of new earth has been coming out of the magma for millions of years. As the rock cools and hardens, it preserves the magnetic polarity under which it was formed. What you find are clear bands of opposing polarity. changing back and forth in a very periodic pattern, and also shows the abrupt change curves between each polar reversal mentioned in another post.
http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99080&page=1&pp=10 Here's a great thread well underway on this topic in the Future forum...
