Forget global warming, worry about the Earth`s MAGNETOSPHERE...will Earth eventually turn into Mars?

Forget global warming, worry about the MAGNETOSPHERE: Earth's magnetic field is collapsing and it could affect the climate and wipe out power grids
--Earth's magnetic field has weakened by 15 per cent over the last 200 years
--Could be a sign that the planet's north and south poles are about to flip
--If this happens, solar winds could punch holes into the Earth's ozone layer
--This could damage power grids, affect weather and increase cancer rates
--Evidence of flip happening in the past has been uncovered in pottery
--As the magnetic shield weakens, the spectacle of an aurora would be visible every night all over the Earth

By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD
DAILYMAIL
January 27, 2014

Deep within the Earth, a fierce molten core is generating a magnetic field capable of defending our planet against devastating solar winds.

The protective field extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to animal migration and weather patterns. But this magnetic field, so important to life on Earth, has weakened by 15 per cent over the last 200 years. And this, scientists claim, could be a sign that the Earth’s poles are about to flip.

The Earth's protective field extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to animal migration and weather patterns, credit: Ian Cuming/Ikon images/Crobis

The Earth's protective field extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to animal migration and weather patterns. Experts believe we're currently overdue a flip, but they're unsure when this could occur. 

If a switch happens, we would be exposed to solar winds capable of punching holes into the ozone layer. The impact could be devastating for mankind, knocking out power grids, radically changing Earth’s climate and driving up rates of cancer.

‘This is serious business’, Richard Holme, Professor of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences at Liverpool University told MailOnline. ‘Imagine for a moment your electrical power supply was knocked out for a few months – very little works without electricity these days.’

The Earth's climate would change drastically. In fact, a recent Danish study believes global warming is directly related to the magnetic field rather than CO2 emissions. The study claimed that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.

The Earth's magnetic field explained:


Radiation at ground level would also increase, with some estimates suggesting overall exposure to cosmic radiation would double causing more deaths from cancer. Researchers predict that in the event of a flip, every year a hundred thousand people would die from the increased levels of space radiation.

'Radiation could be 3-5 times greater than that from the man-made ozone holes. Furthermore, the ozone holes would be larger and longer-lived,' said Dr Colin Forsyth from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL.

The magnetosphere is a large area around the Earth produced by the planet's magnetic field. It presence means that charged particles of the solar wind are unable to cross the magnetic field lines and are deflected around the Earth, credit: NASA

The magnetosphere is a large area around the Earth produced by the planet’s magnetic field. It presence means that charged particles of the solar wind are unable to cross the magnetic field lines and are deflected around the Earth.

Space agencies are now taking the threat seriously. In November, three spacecraft were launched as part of the SWARM mission to uncover how the Earth’s magnetic field is changing.
The mission plans to provide better maps of our planet's magnetic field and help scientists understand the impact of space weather on satellite communication and GPS.

‘Whilst we have a basic understanding of the interior of the Earth, there is much we still don’t know,’ said Dr Forsyth. ‘We do not fully understand how the Earth’s magnetic field is generated, why it is variable and the timescales of these variations.’

The mission will provide a current map of Earth’s magnetic field. But historic evidence of its decline has already been found in a surprising source – ancient pottery. Scientists have discovered that ancient pots can act as a magnetic time capsule. This is because they contain an iron-based mineral called magnetite. When pots form, the magnetite minerals align with the Earth’s magnetic field, just like compass needles.

By examining pottery from prehistory to modern times, scientists have discovered just how dramatically the field has changed in the last few centuries. They’ve found that Earth’s magnetic field is in a permanent state of flux. Magnetic north drifts and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so a compass would point south instead of north. If the magnetic field continues to decline, over billions of years, Earth could end up like Mars - a once oceanic world that has become a dry, barren planet incapable of supporting life.

But scientists claim the rate of decline is too fast for the Earth’s core to simply burn out. Instead, the story told by ancient pottery suggests the Earth's poles could be about to undergo another flip.

According to the British Geological Survey, the Earth's magnetic field has on average four or five reversals in polarity every million years and we’re now overdue a similar event.
‘At the moment, we cannot accurately determine whether or not the Earth’s field is about to flip,’ said Dr Forsyth. ‘We have only been recording the Earth’s field for around 170 years; about 1-15 per cent of the time a flip is expected to take.’

If a flip occurs, it would cause the Earth’s magnetic shield to be weakened for thousands of years, opening up our defenses and causing cosmic radiation to get through.

'We have a double layer defense shield,' Jim Wild a space scientists at Lancaster University.
'Space is full of stuff that’s not great for biological tissue. If we didn’t have an atmosphere, that stuff would be hitting us. It’s the magnetic field protects atmosphere from the solar wind.'

‘Some speculative studies have suggested that as the Earth’s magnetic field weakens we could see an increase in cloud coverage in the troposphere and an increase in the polar ozone holes,’ added Dr Forsyth. 'This would be particularly evident in the northern hemisphere where up to 40 per cent of the ozone within the hole region could be lost, far greater than the current losses.’

In fact, in one area, there is evidence that a flip is already occurring. ‘The increasing strength of the South Atlantic anomaly, an area of weak field over Brazil, is already a problem,’ said Professor Holme.

Not all of the effects of a weak magnetic field will be bad. The much sought-after spectacle of an aurora would be visible every night all over the Earth as solar winds hit the atmosphere

‘Satellites flying over have far more problems than in other locations. Astrophysical satellite are just switched off in this location, but from my perspective, this isn’t much good if you want to study the Brazilian rainforest.’

'The very highly charged particles can have a deleterious effect on the satellites and astronauts,' added Dr Mona Kessel, a Magnetosphere discipline scientist at Nasa.
Scientists however, are quick to point out that while a magnetic flip could cause problems for mankind, the event won’t be a catastrophic.

‘We’ve had many reversals in the past, and haven’t been able to show that they had anything to do with, for example, mass extinctions,’ said Professor Holme. And not all of the effects will be bad. The much sought-after spectacle of an aurora would be visible every night all over the Earth as solar winds hit the atmosphere. There remains, however, much work yet to be done in understanding the properties of the deep Earth.

The Earth’s core is a hostile world where the crushing forces and temperatures, similar to that of the surface of the sun, take our scientific understanding and abilities to the limit.

'This isn't some crazy theory that might happen,' said Professor Wild. 'There is evidence, but we still need to do more science to understand the impact...I'm confidence we can come up with a solution.'

New study says life on Earth has another good 1.75 billion years to go...unless we humans screw it up beforehand

How Much Longer Can Earth Support Life?
[Life on Earth has another good 1.75 billion years to go, study says]
by Wynne Parry 
LiveScience
Sep. 18, 2013 

Earth could continue to host life for at least another 1.75 billion years, as long as nuclear holocaust, an errant asteroid or some other disaster doesn't intervene, a new study calculates.

But even without such dramatic doomsday scenarios, astronomical forces will eventually render the planet uninhabitable. Somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now, Earth will travel out of the solar system's habitable zone and into the "hot zone," new research indicates.

These zones are defined by water. In the habitable zone, a planet (whether in this solar system or an alien one) is just the right distance from its star to have liquid water. Closer to the sun, in the "hot zone," the Earth's oceans would evaporate. Of course, conditions for complex life — including humans — would become untenable before the planet entered the hot zone.

But the researchers' main concern was the search for life on other planets, not predicting a timeline for the end of life on this one.

The evolution of complex life on Earth suggests the process requires a lot of time.

Simple cells first appeared on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. "We had insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago," lead researcher Andrew Rushby of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom said in a statement." Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years — so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop."

Rushby and his colleagues developed a new tool to help evaluate the amount of time available for the evolution of life on other planets: a model that predicts the time a planet would spend in its habitable zone. In the research, published Wednesday in the journal Astrobiology, they applied the model to Earth and eight other planets currently in the habitable zone, including Mars.

They calculated that Earth's habitable-zone lifetime is as long as 7.79 billion years. (Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old.) Meanwhile, the other planets had habitable-zone lifetimes ranging from 1 billion years to 54.72 billion years.

"If we ever needed to move to another planet, Mars is probably our best bet," Rushby said in a statement. "It's very close and will remain in the habitable zone until the end of the sun's lifetime — 6 billion years from now."

While other models have been developed for Earth, they are not suitable for other planets, he added.


Original article published on LiveScience.

Russia`s answer to countering asteroid threat to the Earth

A Russian scientist has proposed using ICBM`s to fight threats posed by asteroids hitting Earth

This week its been reported that a Russian rocket scientist thinks a Russian ICBM can be used to destroy asteroids that pose a threat to the Earth, specifically the Soviet-era Voyevoda ICBM or NATO classification SS-18 Satan missiles. This news comes four months after a powerful meteor struck Russia’s Urals region, injuring 1,200 people in the area.

Now, the Soviet-era Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) ICBMs which have been in service since 1967 "...are well-suited for fighting suddenly discovered small [space] objects,” said Sabit Saitgarayev, a senior researcher at the State Rocket Design Center in the city of Miass in the Chelyabinsk Region.

These ICBM`s use the standard liquid fuel based on hydrazine and not the cryogenic fuel used in Russian heavy space rockets like the Soyuz which cannot be kept for long and is supplied directly before the launch. In essence, the latter rocket fuel type requires several days for prepping the rockets for launch and would not be favorable against targets discovered only hours before hitting the Earth.

For this reason, the scientist says the Voyevoda missiles are favorable as they can take off 10-20 minutes after an order is given for launch and are able to "destroy small space objects with a diameter of up to 100 meters if the missile is equipped with the third stage and if reequipped with a booster, the missile will be able to destroy space objects five-six hours before their collision with the Earth", he said.

Currently, the Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) are 2 staged ICBM`s with a payload capacity of 8.8 tons, that can carry up to 10 warheads, each with a yield up to 750 kilotons (TNT). "The [missiles] can stay in the condition of their readiness for launch for ten and more years, after some reequipping,” the scientist said.

Now, the only other question is, how the vicinity of the asteroid blast with the missiles along with the blast fragments will pose a grave threat to our ever growing number of satellites that orbit the planet as well as the ISS crew in space. This is of concern since when in 2007 China tested a ground-launched anti-satellite weapon and was condemned for it due to the dangers of the thousands of pieces of debris in orbit that continue to threaten both manned and unmanned spacecraft. 

Source:  Russian Scientist Proposes Satan Missiles to Fight Asteroid Threats (Ria Novosti)

Great Minds, Great Words: We Humans Are Capable Of Greatness - Carl Sagan

Uploaded by SagansCosmos on Aug 14, 2010
http://youtu.be/mTumUJq0CfU

Science & Reason: http://tinyurl.com/ScienceReason

This is Carl Sagan reading from his book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space". Director Michael Marantz shoots the timelapse for this piece, composes the music and edits.

"It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars, it will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses, more confident, far-seeing, capable, and prudent. For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness." (Carl Sagan)

A film by: Michael Marantz
http://www.michaelmarantz.com


[Video property and courtesy of SagansCosmos`s Channel, please give proper credit and citation] 

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History of planetary catastrophes...The Mysterious Tunguska Event - Carl Sagan

In the history of the solar system, and even in human history, there are clear records of extraordinary and devastating catastrophes… On the landscapes of other planets, where the records of the past are better preserved, there is abundant evidence of major catastrophes. It’s all a matter of time scales. An event which is improbable in a hundred years, may be inevitable in a hundred million years. Even on the Earth in this century there have been bizarre natural events.

Carl Sagan
Cosmos – A Personal Voyage (1980) [video]

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time).

Although the cause of the explosion is the subject of debate, it is commonly believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 510 kilometres (36 miles) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.

Although the meteor or comet burst in the air rather than directly hitting the surface, this event is still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 megatons[4] to as high as 30 megatons of TNT, with 1015 megatons the most likely—roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested in late February 1954, about 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.

The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles). It is estimated that the shockwave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

---

Carl Edward Sagan, Ph.D. (1934-1996) was an American astronomer, astrochemist, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage", which has been seen by more than 600 million people in over 60 countries, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.

A book to accompany the program was also published. He also wrote the novel "Contact", the basis for the 1997 Robert Zemecki's film of the same name starring Jodie Foster.

During his lifetime, Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he frequently advocated skeptical inquiry, secular humanism, and the scientific method.

http://www.carlsagan.com

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Did Earth’s Gold Come From Outer Space?

Did Earth’s Gold Come From Outer Space?
 (Top 100 Stories of 2011 #53 -DISCOVER)
Money never grows on trees, but precious metals do sometimes fall from the sky.
by Elizabeth Svoboda
DISCOVER Magazine
From the January-February special issue; published online December 27, 2011
(Image left: iStockphoto)


The platinum in your wedding 
ring and the gold in your dental fillings most likely arrived on Earth in a furious meteoric bombardment 200 million years after the planet’s formation, University of Bristol geologist Matthias Willbold reports. According to standard planetary formation models, the gold, platinum, and 
tungsten that were present when Earth was born should have quickly bonded to iron and sunk into the planet’s core. Those precious metals are thousands of times more prevalent on the surface of Earth and in its mantle than the models predict.


Willbold proposes that a colossal meteor shower about 4 billion years ago deposited the additional bling. To test his theory, he measured the isotopic mix of tungsten in rocks from an ancient formation that predates the proposed meteor shower. He then compared the readings with isotopes found in more recent rocks. “If you look at really ancient rocks in Greenland, the tungsten composition is different,” he says.


[Related Fact]
The largest gold deposit ever, may not even be on this planet. Eros, one of the closest asteroids to Earth, is thought to have gold valued in excess of a thousand billion dollars. That`s 200,000 times the amount of gold that has ever been mines on Earth.
Source: Gold Rush Alaska (Aired: 02/13/12)