[From the thunderbolts.info Web-site -- Mar 16, 2011:]
COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE:
Leibniz’ beloved adage that natura non facit saltus or ‘nature does not make leaps’ has had to endure a fair amount of comeuppances since it gained currency.
An arresting example today of our unpredictable world is the rapid wandering of the north geomagnetic pole in recent years – an eastward movement currently estimated at a rate of 37 miles per year and possibly still accelerating. The surge of attention for this in the popular media highlights a widespread fear of the unknown, in which the possibility of a complete reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles occupies a prominent part.
Yet although signs that the earth’s magnetic field is really about to reverse are wanting, the likes of Carolus Linnaeus, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin might have turned over in their graves at today’s grand display of nature’s capriciousness.
Whereas newspapers and television programmes delight in the phrase that the north magnetic pole of the earth has not been known to move with such celerity “since records began,” modern scientists are not at all taken aback by these developments, as such man-made records are really all but hoary.
Archaeologists, climatologists and geophysicists have been studying records of past pole movements buried in the earth’s crust since at least a couple of decades. Extracting archaeomagnetic measurements from baked clay materials, collected from archaeological sites, and – for earlier periods – from geological sediments, painstaking analysis has enabled researchers to model the past evolution of the earth’s magnetic field all the way back to the onset of the Holocene.
SNIP
An especially active episode – known among Russian researchers as the Sterno-Etrussia geomagnetic excursion – occurred between ±800 and ±600 BCE and lasted one or two centuries. During this time, the geomagnetic dipole inclined more than 10º towards the East, taking it to ±81.4º N, 45.1º E, just to the northeast of Spitsbergen.
SNIP
Indeed, as a handful of researchers have argued, the very outburst of auroral activity exhibited in the skies over the Middle East during this period was almost certainly recorded in ancient sources as a smattering of "visions," including the famous "vision of the chariot" reported by the Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel. The latter was essentially “a windstorm coming out of the North,” “an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light.”SNIP ... it can be shown that prophetic visions reducible to auroral apparitions – and perhaps accompanied by hallucinations, induced by ambient electromagnetic fields – have fuelled significant changes in prevailing cultural paradigms. It may not be coincidental that the Sterno-Etrussia geomagnetic excursion roughly corresponds to the so-called "axial age," which was typified by spiritual revolutions extending from Greece to China. Confucianism and Daoism in China, Buddhism and Jainism in India, Zoroastrianism in Persia, the reformative utterances of the Hebrew prophets and Greek philosophy all share a common origin in this epoch...SNIP
If the cultural history of mankind thus progresses in leaps and bounds, sometimes in tune with the dance of the magnetic poles, all are advised to allay "Doomsday" fears and to enjoy the ride.
COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE:
Leibniz’ beloved adage that natura non facit saltus or ‘nature does not make leaps’ has had to endure a fair amount of comeuppances since it gained currency.
An arresting example today of our unpredictable world is the rapid wandering of the north geomagnetic pole in recent years – an eastward movement currently estimated at a rate of 37 miles per year and possibly still accelerating. The surge of attention for this in the popular media highlights a widespread fear of the unknown, in which the possibility of a complete reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles occupies a prominent part.
Yet although signs that the earth’s magnetic field is really about to reverse are wanting, the likes of Carolus Linnaeus, Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin might have turned over in their graves at today’s grand display of nature’s capriciousness.
Whereas newspapers and television programmes delight in the phrase that the north magnetic pole of the earth has not been known to move with such celerity “since records began,” modern scientists are not at all taken aback by these developments, as such man-made records are really all but hoary.
Archaeologists, climatologists and geophysicists have been studying records of past pole movements buried in the earth’s crust since at least a couple of decades. Extracting archaeomagnetic measurements from baked clay materials, collected from archaeological sites, and – for earlier periods – from geological sediments, painstaking analysis has enabled researchers to model the past evolution of the earth’s magnetic field all the way back to the onset of the Holocene.
SNIP
An especially active episode – known among Russian researchers as the Sterno-Etrussia geomagnetic excursion – occurred between ±800 and ±600 BCE and lasted one or two centuries. During this time, the geomagnetic dipole inclined more than 10º towards the East, taking it to ±81.4º N, 45.1º E, just to the northeast of Spitsbergen.
SNIP
Indeed, as a handful of researchers have argued, the very outburst of auroral activity exhibited in the skies over the Middle East during this period was almost certainly recorded in ancient sources as a smattering of "visions," including the famous "vision of the chariot" reported by the Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel. The latter was essentially “a windstorm coming out of the North,” “an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light.”SNIP ... it can be shown that prophetic visions reducible to auroral apparitions – and perhaps accompanied by hallucinations, induced by ambient electromagnetic fields – have fuelled significant changes in prevailing cultural paradigms. It may not be coincidental that the Sterno-Etrussia geomagnetic excursion roughly corresponds to the so-called "axial age," which was typified by spiritual revolutions extending from Greece to China. Confucianism and Daoism in China, Buddhism and Jainism in India, Zoroastrianism in Persia, the reformative utterances of the Hebrew prophets and Greek philosophy all share a common origin in this epoch...SNIP
If the cultural history of mankind thus progresses in leaps and bounds, sometimes in tune with the dance of the magnetic poles, all are advised to allay "Doomsday" fears and to enjoy the ride.
