... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Geomagnetic Reversals From Impacts On The Earth R.A . Muller and D.E . Morris review the evidence tying geomagnetic reversals to the impacts of large bodies with the earth: the tektites and microtektites; the climate changes; the biological extinctions, etc. Then they propose a physical mechanism for geomagnetic reversals: "The impact of a large extraterrestrial object on the Earth can produce a geomagnetic reversal through the following mechanism: dust from the impact crater and soot from fires trigger a climate change and the beginning of a little ice age. The redistribution of water near the equator to ice at high latitudes alters the rotation rate of the crust and mantle of the Earth. If the sea-level change is sufficiently large ( 10 meters) and rapid (in a few hundred years), then the velocity shear in the liquid core disrupts the convective cells that drive the dynamo. The new convective cells that subsequently form distort and tangle the previous field, reducing the dipole component near to zero while increasing the energy in multipole components. Eventually a dipole is rebuilt by dynamo action, and the event is seen either as a geomagnetic reversal or as an excursion." (Muller, Richard A., and Morris, Donald E.; "Geomagnetic Reversals from Impacts on the Earth," Geophysical Research Letters, 13:1177, 1986.) Comment. That the earth's field is generated by internal dynamo action is ...
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... the newly corrected radiocarbon scale has pushed the peak of the Ice Ages back from 18,000 BP to 21,000 BP. But there is more. The same article in Science, without saying how he came up with the number, has Bard fixing the strength of the earth's magnetic field at only half its present level 20,000 years ago. This is most interest-ing because over the last 400 years of direct measurements, the geomagnetic field has been steadily decreasing! When and why was there a peak in the intensity of the geomagnetic field? Back to Fairbanks, who also used his coral data to estimate changes in global sea level versus time. About 12,000 BP, he states, sea level was rising ten times faster than today due to melt water from the polar ice caps. This amounts to 2.5 to 4 meters per century. ". .. perhaps fast enough to prompt legends of a Great Flood"! (Kerr, Richard A.; "From One Coral Many Findings Blossom," Science, 248: 1314, 1990.) Comment. It is exceedingly rare to find a scientist musing that there really might have been a Flood. From Science Frontiers #71, SEP-OCT 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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