To get you started read this Abstract from a paper published by the Geological Institute, University of Stockholm, in 1977.
The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion in a broad sense ranges from 13,750 to 12,350 years BP and ends with the Gothenburg Magnetic Flip at 12,400−12,350 years BP (= the Fjärås Stadial in southern Scandinavia) with an equatorial VGP position in the central Pacific. The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip is recorded in five closely dated and mutually correlated cores in Sweden. In all five cores, the inclination is completely reversed in the layer representing the Fjärås Stadial dated at 12,400−12,350 years BP. The cores were taken 160 km apart and represent both marine and lacustrine environments. The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip represents the shortest excursion and the most rapid polar change known at present. It is also hitherto the far best-dated paleomagnetic event. The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion and Flip are proposed as a standard magnetostatigraphic unit.
I get confused by the BP abbreviation. Why can’t they use BC or if you have an issue with BC having a religious connotation use BCE or Before Common Era? Before the Present, or BP starts with 1950 as year 0. Translated into common from nerd speak that ended up being around 11,800 to 10,400 BCE.1
It’s curious how 12,000 BCE keeps popping up all over the place.
The Before Present or BP starts with 1950 because archeologists are douches and chose that year as the reference point primarily because of the developments in radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating is a method used to date organic material by measuring the decay of carbon-14, a naturally occurring radioactive isotope. A millennium of BC usage was too good for them. Had to get that off my chest.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it may sound like it, but it really is not, it is just a matter of timing and duration.
The last complete magnetic reversal occurred some 774,000 years ago with 15 times since then dropping in strength significantly but not quite reaching the threshold. Those events are called excursions. But that should be updated as it looks like the last magnetic reversal occurred some 42,000 years ago.2 It is called Laschamp event.3
“For the first time ever, we have been able to precisely date the timing and environmental impacts of the last magnetic pole switch,” says Chris Turney, a professor at UNSW Science and co-lead author of the study.
Why the Gothenburg Magnetic Flip is not included, I could not find out. Except that those “SHORT events are only recorded occasionally in stratigraphical sequences, for example, during periods of rapid sedimentation, or if the record is continuous or samples are very closely spaced. If the chronology is not very exact, even these occasional records cannot usually be reliably correlated, making it difficult to distinguish between ‘noise’ and real events”.4
The magnetic poles are the points on the Earth's surface where the magnetic field lines are vertical. These are the North Magnetic Pole and the South Magnetic Pole. The magnetic field is created by the movement of molten iron within the Earth's outer core, and the magnetic poles are determined by the positions of the north and south magnetic dipoles.
On the other hand, the geomagnetic poles are theoretical points on the Earth's surface where the axis of a simplified dipole model of the Earth's magnetic field intersects the Earth's surface. The dipole model is an approximation of the Earth's complex magnetic field which assumes that the Earth's magnetic field can be represented by a simple bar magnet aligned with the Earth's rotational axis. The geomagnetic poles are the locations where the magnetic field is vertical according to this simplified model.
We have reliable data since 1905 courtesy of the International Geomagnetic Reference Field Model (IGRF), but we can also extend that to 1590 thanks to the Royal Society of London that published in the 2000s a dataset that originates from unpublished observations taken by mariners engaged in merchant and naval shipping. “For the period before 1800, more than 83,000 individual observations of magnetic declination were recorded at more than 64,000 locations; more than 8000 new observations are for the 17th century alone and totals 36 512 parameters.”5
The total movement in the entire dataset can be seen on this map of the historical declination of the magnetic field from the National Centers for Environmental Information or more specifically, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
I used the data that is provided on the website and made a small Python script that calculates the drift speed per year. The code and data can be found on GitHub.
And, for more context here is the full dataset. There is a discrepancy around 2020 that is mostly due to missing indication if it’s west or east in the dataset as it’s so close to the 180 that it goes +/- constantly. I left it in there but just imagine it’s part of the sequence and up there with the rest of the points.
Even more interesting is the data about the strength of the Earth's magnetic field. It's measured in Ampere per Square Meter, which is a standard unit for expressing the Earth's magnetic dipole moment. The dipole moment has been decreasing over the period from 8.32 in 1900 to 7.70 in 2023 or 30% in the last 3,000 years.6
Now, the “official” narrative is that magnetic reversals take hundreds if not thousands of years but if we take a look at Gothenburg Magnetic Flip on its face value they can come on fast, like a switch.
Recently, another issue arose regarding our force field against the universe. On December 18, 2023 paper titled: Potential Perturbation of the Ionosphere by Megaconstellations and Corresponding Artificial Re-entry Plasma Dust by Sierra Solter-Hunt was published. She is a Plasma physicist concerned with space weather.
In essence, all those satellites up there in orbit are polluting our near-earth environment with conductive particulate. 7
The Starlink V2 satellite constellation (just one of many planned megaconstellations) intends to have 42,000 satellites, each the mass of an SUV, truck, or large car (1250+ kg). Each satellite has a planned lifetime of only 5 years (if successful and many satellites are failing sooner), thus in order to maintain the megaconstellation, 23 satellites per day will complete a re-entry burn in the upper atmosphere. This is approximately 26,308 kilograms (29 tons) of satellite re-entry material every day, just for the Starlink megaconstellation. Thus, every day, just for this one constellation, the conductive mass of material added to the upper atmosphere will be 150 million times greater than the mass of the protective Van Allen Belts. Thus, every second, just for this one megaconstellation, the mass of approximately 2,000 Van Allen Belts will be deposited into the ionosphere. Thus, the megaconstellations are creating their own plasma dust region vastly greater in mass than that of the Van Allen Belts or any other region of the magnetosphere.
The paper highlights that the mass of this conductive debris could significantly exceed the mass of the Van Allen Belts, which are critical for protecting Earth from solar radiation. Preliminary analysis indicates that the Debye length, a measure of a plasma's electrical properties, is significantly higher in regions affected by satellite traffic, suggesting that the particulate matter could form a conductive layer around Earth. The Debye length is like a measure that tells us how far an electric field can go in a soup of charged particles, like in a plasma (which is like a gas but with charged particles). Imagine you have a charged particle, like a speck with an electric charge. The Debye length is how far away from this speck the electric field it creates can be felt before the other charges in the soup cancel it out. So, it's like measuring how big the sphere of influence is for a charged particle in this charged particle soup.
This could lead to a lot of issues like:
Alteration of the Ionosphere's Electrical Properties: The ionosphere plays a crucial role in the Earth's electromagnetic environment, affecting radio wave propagation and satellite communication.
Interference with Radio Communications: The ionosphere reflects certain radio frequencies, which is why it's possible to receive shortwave radio signals from great distances. Changes in the ionosphere's properties could alter the reflection and absorption of these radio waves, leading to disruptions in radio communications, including those used for aviation, military, and emergency services.
Impact on Satellite Operations: The increased conductivity could lead to enhanced charging of satellite surfaces in low Earth orbit (LEO), as the conductive particles interact with the spacecraft. This can cause electrostatic discharge events, potentially damaging sensitive electronics and reducing satellite lifespan.
Modification of the Earth's Magnetosphere: The Earth's magnetosphere is influenced by the ionosphere's electrical properties. A significant alteration in the ionosphere could, therefore, have knock-on effects on the magnetosphere, potentially changing how it shields the Earth from solar wind and cosmic rays.
So we could have a compounding effect of the slow natural process combined with humans putting tons and tons of conductive dust near Earth.
It’s not enough that everything we eat now contains microplastic so we have to pollute our orbit too.
So, what are the consequences when there is a magnetic pole flip?
Besides that, we could lose all modern global communication capability, when Earth loses its shield against Suns and universes radiation it could lead to more ionization of our atmosphere. The unfiltered radiation would rip apart air particles in Earth’s atmosphere, separating electrons and emitting light creating beautiful Auroras. Ionized air is an excellent conductor so to say lightning storms would be extreme is an understatement. Also, as a side benefit, tanning would be almost instant.
The idea that Earth’s protective magnetic shield is constant has long been known, for at least a couple of hundred years we have known that north is not true north. But just recently we got the tools to plot the magnitude and speed of the movement of the poles. And if not an immediate issue, it adds another layer to our understanding of how small we are compared to the immense forces in the universe, or even closer, on Earth itself.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003358947790031X
https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/ancient-relic-points-turning-point-earths-history-42000-years-ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laschamp_event
https://www.nature.com/articles/251408a0
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Four-centuries-of-geomagnetic-secular-variation-Jackson-Jonkers/d6dfbd93ae862ad439684916399f8052e85d35a6?p2df
https://projects.research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/en/horizon-magazine/earths-magnetic-poles-could-start-flip-what-happens-then
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.09329.pdf