From: "lee gilliland" <leeandalexis at hotmail.com>
To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Re: the earth's tilt
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 11:11:27 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

HELLO??? POLITICAL JOKE????

----Original Message Follows----
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: the earth's tilt
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 11:08:46 -0500

ronkean at juno.com wrote:
 >
 > On Sat, 23 Mar 2002 08:52:36 -0500 "lee gilliland"
 > <leeandalexis at hotmail.com> writes:
 > > Gee, if you watch the evening news, they SAID it had moved to the
 > > right a
 > > good two years ago.  Or was that just the USA?
 > >
 >
 > That might have been news of a refined measurement of continental drift,
 > by which it became possible to say with some precision how much a
 > continent had moved in a few years' time.

I seem to remember a report that the north *magnetic* pole was moving
around more than expected.  The physical pole would be a lot harder to
move -- the Earth is a muckin' big gyroscope.  Theories of how the Earth
generates its magnetic field are, uhh, incomplete.

One of the (kook) theories of why the Earth's crust "tips over" every
now and again depends on the reversals in the Earth's magnetic field.
Basically, at the crust-mantle discontinuity, there is a magnetic effect
that holds the crust onto the rest of the planet.  When the magnetic
field goes away during a reversal, the crust isn't held on any more and
it slides around.  I believe the "Pole Shift" book that somebody
mentioned discusses this.

They don't discuss (1) the equatorial bulge or (2) the inertia of the
oceans.  (1) means it wouldn't work anyway, and (2) means that the
oceans would head across the continents at 1000 mph.  Noticeable.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."

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