[oleg]

Originally posted by Nodachi:

quote:

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Originally posted by Oleg:
It will not be that bad. Even at the most extreme of the magnetic field flipping, the residual magnetic field will be strong enough to keep us safe. At worst, radiation will be like in polar regions today. All this stuff is good for scare stories in media but is in fact pretty harmless.

Oleg, I beg to differ. The Earth's magnetic field is the only thing that protects us from solar flares. Let us get hit by an X-class flare while the field is down, or even weakened, and it'll be a very different planet indeed.

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But at no point of time it will disappear completely. Poles flip-flop is like a U-turn on a highway. You do not stop and reverse, you do some sort of imitation of Bond' movies chase. There won't a single moment when Earth has no magnetic field. Instead we will have many poles, some even on equator, some North poles in Southern hemisphere and vise versa. Nothern lights will be seen everywhere but that is it.

Disclaimer: The word "poles" used in this post refer to the physics term, not the citizens of Poland.