abridgetoofar Wrote:Geologists and other scientists believe there have been pole reversals in the past.
I believe Michio Kaku also says that, amongst others. It happened a very, very long time ago, though. It's also apparently cyclical. Some of the supporting evidence for this is the prehistoric animals they found under the ice in arctic regions with grass in their stomachs, indicating that the region must have been tropical at some point.
abridgetoofar Wrote:What his professor shared with him was the accepted theory that during a pole shift, the poles do not necessarily creep or walk to reversal, nor do they simply instantly shift. It is believed that instead, they disappear for a certain amount of time, reappearing later in reversed positions.
The interesting part for me was the fact that his professor said that during this time, the Earth's magnetic field would obviously be weakened or simply disappear, allowing much more radiation from the Sun to reach the Earth's surface. This extra radiation would be likely to spawn a period of fast genetic mutation.
Hmmmm, you might want to look into the South Atlantic Anomaly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Atlantic_Anomaly
It's an area of weakened magnetic field, and it's growing.