6 Responses to “Is The Pole Shift Theory Actually Possible?”

1. B. | February 5th, 2010 at 9:29 am
   

   The Mayan calendar does NOT say even one word about pole shifts.
   I am so amazed at how so many people cram so many doomsday end of the world nonsense ideas into one, then call it proof and say that all the scientists are telling them this.
   I dare you to name even ONE reputable, credible modern scientist who believes any of this doomsday junk. You can’t. Not even one.
   Don’t believe in or spread all this doomsday junk. It only makes you look gullible and foolish.
   As for pole shifts. The magnetic axis of the earth is in constant motion and it always has been. That is a proven fact. Any one of the trained geologists in the geology section can tell you a lot more facts about the pole shift but when you ask a question about it there, please don’t say anything about the Mayan calendar or 2012 junk. They have nothing to do with each other.

2. Raymond | February 5th, 2010 at 9:29 am
   

   The Mayan calendar is simply a day-count calendar. It is accurate in as much as each day’s value is the previous day + 1.
   We also use a similar calendar called the Julian Day calendar. Works the same way, except that it uses base-10 numbers (the ones we are used to).
   The Mayan calendar says absolutely NOTHING about a pole shift. This is a modern fabrication invented by charlatans for the Big 2012 Hoax Off.
   The only thing that the Mayan day-count calendar “predicts” is that the count will reach a round figure on the day we call December 21, 2012. This is not surprising, since the Mayan astronomers built their day-count calendar so that this round figure would fall on their “New Year’s Day” (always on Winter Solstice, in their common calendar) in the year when the position of the Winter Solstice would be in the thickest part of the Milky Way.
   This is not such a surprising calculation, since all the Ancient astronomers (Chinese, Greek, Babylonians, Indians…) knew how to calculate the period of precession.
   So, no pole shift.
   The dinosaurs survived countless magnetic polarity reversals, so that the magnetic pole shift did not cause their extinction.
   As for a reversal of the real poles, that is quite impossible (Venus, not being protected by a Moon and being closer to the tidal effect of the Sun, did “suffer” a pole shift: it took a mere 4 billion years).

3. Brant | February 5th, 2010 at 9:29 am
   

   The Mayans said absolutely nothing about pole shifts. Nor did they make any predictions that would relate to that. And for the record, they had no concept of our galaxy or its properties. In fact, they didn’t predict anything. This is more “ancient wisdom” baloney, which has never been right before and is provably wrong again.
   The earth’s magnetic poles do shift. They migrate around slowly, too. But that kind of reversal takes thousands of years. If a reversal began now, it probably wouldn’t be halfway finished for several centuries. Nothing is going to happen in 2012. That’s kind of like saying we’re going to have an ice age next week.
   Edit: I emphasize, (despite some of the weird claims being made here), the magnetic poles will NOT reverse during this century. Like I said, that’s a process that takes thousands of years. And Chris, the dumb 2012 bunk is from a History Channel documentary and it WAS about the Mayans, not the Aztecs. It’s pseudoscientific nonsense, in either case.
   Why do people who KNOW they have no education or expertise in this field, come here and presume to answer questions like this? They’re just quoting garbage they found on apocalyptic web sites made by religious nuts and other ill-informed people who like to scare kids. Or worst of all, the History Channel.

4. andymane | February 5th, 2010 at 9:29 am
   

   No, the pole shift has absolutely nothing to do with the Mayan calendar (it’s predicted that the poles will shift in around 1000 years, not in 2012). The doomsday-ists have simply grabbed onto a scary-sounding topic and crudely stapled it on to 2012 to try and lend some legitimacy to their misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar. The Mayans didn’t know anything about the earth’s magnetic fields… and for that matter, they never made a prophecy about 2012 (it’s just when their calendar turns over – their equivalent of New Year’s).
   Scientists have found evidence that the poles have shifted in the past by examining rocks that formed at various points in time. The details are beyond me, since I’m not a physicist or a geologist, but we basically know that it has happened several times in the past. What we also know, is that each of these pole shifts hasn’t coincided with any major extinction event in the fossil record.
   When the poles shift, it’s likely that the earth’s magnetic field will collapse for a few years. That would allow huge amounts of charged particles from the sun to come barreling towards the earth. This seems like a very bad thing, but in the end, it might save us. Scientists hypothesize that the charged particles would hit the earth’s upper atmosphere and create their own magnetic fields in the process, shielding the surface from the worst of the solar wind. This would keep us relatively safe until the earth’s own magnetic field kicked back in.
   So what would this mean for life on the ground? Probably not too much. We would be exposed to a little more cosmic radiation, so cancer and mutation rates might rise, but not enough to be an apocalyptic event. The disruption might be enough to knock out communications, satellites, and parts of the power grid (like a large solar flare). We’d probably have wonderful auroras in the sky for a while. We’d need new compasses to navigate. All in all, it would probably be just a huge inconvenience.

5. Jennifer | February 5th, 2010 at 9:29 am
   

   The Earth’s axis of rotation – and hence the position of the North Pole – was commonly believed to be fixed (relative to the surface of the Earth) until, in the 18th century, the mathematician Leonhard Euler predicted that the axis might “wobble” slightly. Around the beginning of the 20th century astronomers noticed a small apparent “variation of latitude”, as determined for a fixed point on Earth from the observation of stars. Part of this variation could be attributed to a wandering of the Pole across the Earth’s surface, by a range of a few meters. The wandering has several periodic components and an irregular component. The component with a period of about 435 days is identified with the 8 month wandering predicted by Euler and is now called the Chandler wobble after its discoverer. This “wobble” means that a (fixed) definition of the Pole based on the axis of rotation is not useful when metre-scale precision is required.

6. chris b | February 5th, 2010 at 9:29 am
   

   not sure if the mayan calander (although i think you’re thinking of aztec) has anything to do with the pole shift….but it does end in 2012
   a pole shift is possible and it has happened before
   i think it takes a while to happen though…what happens is exactly what it sounds like.. north goes to where south is
   besides that minor inconvienience the worst thing is probably the magnetosphere moving or something
   it could go wrong and end up with no magnetic field… which is what people think happened to mars – and then solar wind would start to deminish the atmosphere
   but that probably wont happen
   and i highly doubt dinosaurs went extinct from a poleshift
   i also doubt that there will be a poleshift in 2012, also we would probably have plenty of warning and it will be noticeable

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