So, the Poles Are Going to Flip and We're All Going To Die!

 So, you've probably seen those wonderful headlines saying that a temporary polar flip 42,000 years ago killed all the megafauna, finished off the Neanderthals and triggered humans to create cave art.

According to the authors, the flip destroyed the Earth's magnetic field, caused massive climate change, and ionized the atmosphere to degrees which would End Civilization As We Know It if it happened now.

Their evidence? Old trees in Australia. Which does appear to show signs of increased atmospheric carbon isotopes associated with, well, not having a magnetic field. And this does coincide with a time when the poles flipped, then 800 or so years later flipped back. It's called the Laschamp Excursion.

They're arguing it was A Massive Catastrophe That Looked Like the End of Days. Glaciation in North America, shifts in wind belts, huge electrical storms (which caused the cave art by forcing us to hide in caves and I guess their theory is that while hiding in caves from a storm...)

Oh and, of course, it's about to happen again and we're All Going To Die.

First of all, this is one paper (and one of the authors was fired from the University of Adelaide for, apparently, being an asshole). Other evidence doesn't show the kind of climactic changes they're modeling. Ice cores don't show it. And the extinction of Neanderthals and creation of cave art don't actually line up with the shift. It's more likely that the elaborate cave art shows a cultural shift (and as pointed out by the very authors of this paper, elaborate art not in caves wouldn't have survived).

The only record of a shift other than their trees is some Pacific Ocean records that might show temperature fluctuations.

In other words, don't panic yet...it seems this is a little too speculative to be reported as truth.

But what if they're right? When are the poles likely to shift next? Some evidence says soon. The magnetic pole is moving more than normal...or at least more than our records show. The core field is also weakening. Is the magnetic field about to flip?

Some time, experts guess, in oh, a few thousand years. Not tomorrow. Yes, we're all going to die eventually, but probably not from a polar flip.