EARTH’S magnetic field isn’t doing well. It is fading and breaking out in spots, and nobody knows if it will recover. What’s worse, it could even vanish altogether for several thousand years. Without this magnetic shield, we would have no protection against the harsh radiation of the solar wind.
Roughly every 200,000 years, the Earth’s north-south field disappears and then returns with the north and south poles reversed. That hasn’t happened for nearly 800,000 years, says geophysicist Mike Fuller at the University of Hawaii. “We’re certainly overdue for a reversal.” So researchers at the conference pooled their latest results to assess whether the worst is about…
