With all the hype of the impending "2012 Mayan doomsday" I was thinking it might be interesting to see what principles of physics prevent the theories of doomsday from occurring. One overarching theory is that on December 21, 2012, the two magnetic poles will reverse as a result of a solar flare equivalent to 100 billion nuclear bombs, enough to reverse the geomagnetic poles.
Is there any way a solar flare could lead to reversal of the magnetic poles? If not, what prevents it from happening?
Best Answer
This is about how strong they already are.
The Earth's magnetic field is created by the spinning of the core as well as the flows within the mantle. Reversal of the field requires a series of strong, persistent changes over hundreds to thousands of years, and no run-of-the-mill astrophysical event can just "flip" it like a switch. And even if it did, the result would probably not be classified as "catastrophic".
Yeah, no. Not unless it suddenly warped to within a few dozen parsecs of us. Which probably won't happen. And without that, the oceans just keep going up and down like they always do.