The Sun's Magnetic Field is About to Flip

I never knew this.

The Sun's Magnetic Field is About to Flip

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The Sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the Sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of "solar max" will be behind us, with half yet to come.

The Earth's magnetic field flips too, on a much longer scale. They can tell by studying the undersea faults where continental drift originates. We're about due for one.

Nobody knows for sure what the practical effects are. Probably nil.

But it could be starting.

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Research has shown that Earth's magnetic field is constantly in a state of flux, and every few hundred thousand years (give or take), Earth's magnetic field flips, with the north and south magnetic poles swapping places.

That process could actually occur more frequently than people think, but while scientists continually debate when we might next witness such an event, even the regular, wandering movements of Earth's magnetic poles keep geophysicists guessing.

In any case, it's not fully clear how those reversals might be tied to what's currently going on with the South Atlantic Anomaly – which some have suggested could be caused by a vast reservoir of dense rock underneath Africa called the African Large Low Shear Velocity Province.

What is certain, though, is that the South Atlantic Anomaly is not sitting still. Since 1970, the anomaly has been growing in size, as well as moving westward at a pace of approximately 20 kilometres (12 miles) per year. But that's not all.

New readings provided by the ESA's Swarm satellites show that within the past five years, a second centre of minimum intensity has begun to open up within the anomaly.