Without the Earth’s magnetic field life could not exist on planet Earth. It is a ‘built in’ shield against dangerous radiation and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun. It is a gift from the Creator of the universe, Who created our Earth-spaceship to contain and protect life. In the following I discuss a few important aspects in the design of the spaceship.
Contrary to popular evolutionary-faith beliefs the Earth is not yet 6000 years old. At creation God created the Earth with a liquid metallic core, perhaps made from iron and nickel. The outer core, which by virtue of the freely circulating electron current generates a magnetic field, with an axis offset by a few degrees from the spin axis of the planet. This offset varies over time. The positions of the North and South magnetic poles wander around moving out to as much as 20 degrees from the spin or rotational axis.
The North magnetic pole has been moving northward and is currently less than 4 degrees from the North Pole. See image below. This position of the magnetic poles, which determines the direction that compasses point, may change by a significant amount in as little as a few years. That position is called the magnetic declination. The speed at which the magnetic poles change position ranges from nearly zero (over a century ago) to more than 48 km (30 miles) per year over most of the last decade or two. The magnetic poles North and South also do not always align with each other.
There is nowadays talk of a pole flip, where North and South magnetic poles interchange. That requires some significant amount of energy for that to occur. And for that a catastrophic event is needed. But it has happened in the past.
Observations of the magnetisation of certain rocks show past rapid reversals. Secular science argues they were over millions of years but the known cooling rates of basalts from extruded magma suggest during Noah’s flood the magnetic poles flipped numerous times. To be clear this does not involve the planet ‘tipping over’; it is a swapping of the magnetic poles, not the spin axis poles.
Personally I think it very unlikely to happen again. The global deluge of Noah’s flood was a very special event. Earth changes occurred on a massive scale. See Catastrophic Plate Tectonics. To flip the direction of the current flow in the core would need a significant impulse from something on the same scale. The circulating current is only loosely coupled to the spin of the planet. A stronger decoupling might be possible through a catastrophic Earth changing event. However God promised never to flood the planet again but that does not rule out global nuclear war or asteroid impact.
Most people are familiar with the magnetic dipole of a bar magnetic and Earth’s field is perhaps 90% a dipole. But there are other magnetic field components especially the quadrupole and octupole fields. There are also other more local effects due to non-symmetry (heterogeneous distribution) of magnetic material in the Earth’s mantle. This causes local magnetic field variations.
The alleged evolutionary geologic history says that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, give or take a bit. The evolutionists propose an internal dynamo that constantly maintains the energy in the Earth’s magnetic field, which is in stark contrast to the observed decay. Evolutionists need to propose this because of a prior commitment to materialism.
Over the past 200 years, since Gauss first measured the local field strength, the Earth’s magnetic field intensity has been decaying exponentially. That means given sufficient time (less than a total of 10,000 years) there should be no magnetic field remaining. But there is! Now! This is not a problem for biblical creation (<6000 years) but it sure is for evolutionary theory of Earth/solar system formation. It’s a big problem for Old Earth believers of any flavour.
Because of the complexities of energy shifting between the main dipole field and the higher multipole components of the magnetic field it is possible this causes the magnetic poles to wander around almost randomly over time. Overall the total energy in the magnetic field, which includes all multipole components, is decaying exponentially. That is energy is being lost due to resistance in the core. The core is not a superconductor and therefore has a finite resistance. The circulating current loses energy as a free decay. Thermodynamics requires that to be true. That model fits the data and is consistent with the planet having an age less than 6000 years.
The Van Allen Radiation Belt is a torus of energetic charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. The inner belt consists of mostly protons and the outer belt of mostly electrons. These are essentially the Earth’s shield against highly energetic particles from the cosmos. We call the latter cosmic rays but they are actually charged particles.
The Van Allen Belts are near Earth, inside the magnetic field. They look like two giant donuts surrounding the planet. Particles, mostly protons, from the sun get past the magnetic field by coming in through the tail of the magnetosphere, which is called the magnetotail. Sometimes these particles get trapped and can’t get out. These comprise the Van Allen Belts of trapped particles. See illustration below. The white arrows in the ‘Solar wind’ indicate ‘Incoming solar wind particles’.
Many of the particles from the sun are deflected and stream away from Earth in the magnetotail. But some are trapped in the Van Allen radiation belts.
The charged particles from the sun charge up the Van Allen Belts by adding more protons and electrons depending on the intensity of corpuscular (particle) radiation from the sun. This has two design purposes. One is the shield itself absorbs a lot of direct particle bombardment and radiation on the earth. The second is the shield reduces the impact of much higher energy cosmic rays.
However it is a beautifully designed system controlled by the sun. More particles from the sun boosts the Van Allen shielding from cosmic rays yet cosmic rays are principally responsible for cloud seeding. So indirectly the sun’s activity controls the formation of clouds, which in turn moderate the effects of the sun radiation on Earth. That is right, global cooling or warming is controlled by this mechanism.
The Earth’s magnetic field has north and south poles. It is in these regions where the solar particles insert themselves past the Van Allen shielding. These cause the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, the northern and southern lights seen when these particles collide with atmospheric molecules. God puts on a light show!
Astronauts leaving the earth environment spend little time in the Van Allen Belts and would have minimum exposure to radiation. The principal danger of the Van Allen Belts is high-energy protons, which are not that difficult to shield against. And the Apollo navigators plotted a course through the thinnest parts of the belts and arranged for the spacecraft to pass through them quickly, limiting the exposure. But each astronaut wore a personal dosimeter. The accumulated dose for each astronaut was regularly reported to Mission Control via radio.
Regarding that issue, James Van Allen, whom the Belts are named after, said:
“The recent Fox TV show, which I saw, is an ingenious and entertaining assemblage of nonsense. The claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts is only one example of such nonsense.” — Dr. James Van Allen quoted here.
The last link goes into much more detail.
On the moon and while travelling between the earth and the moon I believe solar flares followed by CMEs are a far more dangerous issue for astronauts. On January 20, 2005 a major solar flare hit the moon. If astronauts had been there then they would have been exposed and would have experienced radiation sickness. That solar storm was very significant. More here. But that is a NASA website and the conspiracy theorists will just say it is all part of the cover-up.
Cosmic rays have another function. They convert atmospheric normal Nitrogen-14 atoms into radioactive Carbon-14. See the illustration on the right.
Earth has been radiated with cosmic rays through its history and hence Carbon-14 has been formed and taken up by plants and hence animals, but even more so recently as the shielding effect of the Earth’s magnetic field has been exponentially decaying. Less shielding means more cosmic rays means more Carbon-14 creation.
As you probably have heard this Carbon-14 is used to measure the age of dead organisms as well as any rock containing Carbon. Diamonds for example were measured to be less than 56,000 years old. No other carbon bearing mineral (of organic or non-organic origin) on Earth has ever been measured to be older than 45,000 years. These results were with evolutionary assumptions. With biblical creation assumptions those ages contract down to 6000-7000 years and 4500 years respectively. See 8 Reasons Why Evolution is Foolish and the associated lecture here.
This description captures the salient points of the Earth shielding by the magnetic field. But it is decaying. This means we have a finite time left before we lose the shielding effect altogether. The half-life of the exponential decay of the magnetic field was measured to be about 1400 years. That time is only thousands of years, not billions. The dynamo theory is only believed because of a rejection of the true biblical history. There will never be a time machine invented, so one can never measure anything in the past. It is in principle impossible. And all dating techniques require unprovable assumptions.
The Earth’s magnetic field provides an invisible ‘force’ field to protect the planet against harmful radiation from space. It moderates the effects of that radiation on Earth’s climate, but the controlling force that underlies the Van Allen Radiation Belt shield is the sun. Nothing catastrophic will happen in our future except it be the will of our benevolent Creator. So there is no need to worry; you are in His hands.
Related Reading
- The Mystery of Earth’s Magnetic Field
- The Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Young
- Earth’s Magnetic Field
- Earth’s Young Magnetic Field Revisited
Recommended Reading
- Book: Apocalypse Now: On the Revelation of Jesus Christ
- Book: Merchants of Death: Global Oligarchs and Their War On Humanity
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