A few years ago, workers digging to create a power station in New Zealand discovered a 60-tonne trunk from a kauri tree, and according to researchers, it was the last collapse of Earth’s magnetic field.
ScienceMag
The massive trunk that actually belongs to one of the largest tree species in the country is said to be about 42,000 years old and it is preserved in a wet muddy soil – its rings stretch over 1700 years which shows a chaotic timeline when the world magnetic field was turned upside down.
The radiocarbon levels in this massive piece of wood show an increase in radiation from space as Earth’s magnetic field which protects it has weakened and the poles have actually turned, according to the researchers.
They say that the climate of the earth has changed drastically for some time by modeling the effect of this radiation on the earth’s atmosphere, which could be responsible for the extinction of large mammals. of Australia and the Neanderthals in Europe.
What is more surprising is that the study tells a story in detail regarding the timing and extent of this exchange of poles, while also being the first to make a credible case (although it is speculative) and claims that the flipping can affect the global climate.
If you do not know, Earth’s magnetic field is formed thanks to the flow of molten iron in the outer core of the earth’s crust which is also susceptible to chaotic swing which is known to not only weaken the field, but also that the poles can move and turn completely.
It is known that the magnetic orientation of minerals in rocks leaves traces of prolonged inversions, but the same cannot be said for flips that last only a few hundred years, as the approximately 42,000 years ago. However, radioactive carbon-14 can detect these brief fluctuations. The isotope is created when cosmic rays pass through space through the magnetic field and hit the atmosphere.
It is also absorbed by living things on the planet, including the trees. The team used the help of radiocarbon to update the above kauri wood using accurate but fairly raw radiocarbon cave records from China. After measuring finer carbon-14 changes in the trees’ rings, they observed how their growth differs at 40-year intervals as the magnetic fields decrease and increase.
Dots in radiocarbon indicate that the magnetic field weakened by 6 percent of its current strength about 41,500 years ago. During this time the poles turned and the field became strong again, but then collapsed and struck back about 500 years later.
NASA
Scientists also claim that at this time not only the cosmic ray screen of our planet was not functional, but also of our suns. If we look at tips from ice cores, researchers suggest that at that time the sun was experiencing episodes of low magnetic activity – called grand minima – which they said would destroy today’s power networks and create aurora in subtropics due to ionization of the atmosphere.
The management of a climate model further suggested that such a cosmic ray attack would destroy the ozone layer, reduce the heat it otherwise absorbs from UV rays, while also causing changes in cooling at high altitudes, altering wind flow and would cause catastrophic changes on the Earth’s surface. with a colder America and warmer Europe.