That was one of the first TED Talks I ever watched, and with a filming date of 2002 it makes you wonder whether anything new has come to light on the points made. Like the magnetic field. And the simulations of reversal that NASA arrived at just one year later, where:
They've also learned what happens during a magnetic flip. Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time - contrary to popular belief - the magnetic field does not vanish. "It just gets more complicated,"
Regarding 'pulling the plug on the clock, look around you. We've got geological evidence that dates the Earth to 4 and a half billion years old. We can follow the history of his invisible-to-the-human-eye magnetic fields by looking at the very rock beneath our feet. If catastrophic events or dates called for a reset the Earth would have a cyclical history, and we see no evidence for it in the slightest. Even the debate about how often and 'regular' an extinction level event like the asteroid that spelled doom for the dinosaurs is steeped in arguments for and against - you can pick out an event every few tens of millions of years, only to find that another body of research presents evidence that doesn't support it at all.
Scared (guest) 27 Jul 2011 08:14