How The Earth Got Its Magnetic Field (And Why It Might Not Protect Us Much Longer) 

I wish you had mentioned US Naval Captain Harry Hess, a geologist in civilian life, who sailed many missions back and forth across the Atlantic during WWII. He had the brilliant idea of towing a magnetometer behind his ship and recording the data. This was the discovery of the strips of basalt with alternating magnetivity along the mid-Atlantic Ridge. This discovery, along with other significant ones, led to the formulation of plate tectonic theory at the famous Asilomar conference in 1970. There has been an accumulation of evidence to support this theory, one of the most important of all science, in the 50+ years since.

Absolutely awesome series that unlike higher budget mainstream productions respects the intelligence of its audience.

These videos are aesthetically pleasing in every way - the information is perfectly arranged by explaining the question so that you understand what's being asked, the answers contain easily comprehensible science, the narration is expressively soothing to hold your attention, the video and graphics are beautiful and explanatory, and the editing is seamless. Wow! This was a delight, and as close to perfect as you can get.

Such a humbling experience, being reminded of how fragile our existence and way of life are. Thank you for your fabulous work. In all your channels. You put most "professionally produced" documentaries to shame.

Huge respect to the cameraman that went back in time to capture the footage for the prologue.

I love how hauntingly beautiful the intro music is for this series.

Thus far my favourite episode. When I was into amateur radio back in "boom days" of sky wave we'd speak of these phenomena for hours. But , then came the flares! COMPLETELY shutting down the radio spectrum from 0 to 30,000 khz. And beyond, sometimes for days. STILL fascinates me. Great video 👌

Im just saying Carrington was a true scientist. He recorded the sun's spots everyday and took notice of something that literally none else saw

Let me tell you something, generally these types of videos aren't my cup of tea. This however is so different, not monotone, beautiful transitions, calming music, clear concise narration. 10/10!

Finally, a presentation on this subject from people that know what the heck they are talking about and know enough to explain it while presenting ways for us to understand as we watch it!! THANK U SO MUCH!!

Scientists who want to study the Earth's core, are working on complicated and difficult experiments to find out, about how planetary cores work. It's a very specialist area, requiring equipment, that has only recently been developed, hence the amount we still don't know.🌐

It blows my mind that we're considering colonizing Mars but we don't even understand the basic working mechanics of our own planet.

Apparently the Earth has been though thousands of these "wandering reversals" over billions of years and while they could have damaged the DNA of some plants and animals it certainly hasn't resulted in any extinction-type of events. Now, however, while animals that use magnetic fields for navigation would be severely affected the main danger is for humans. If the electrical grid should be destroyed, which it almost certainly would be, mass starvation would occur. Estimates are that it would take two decades to rebuild it due to the fact that all the components, (making steel, wires, rubber or plastic components, circuit boards, dynamos, etc.), require electricity to make. Trucks can't run without gasoline and that requires electricity to make. Only a tiny percentage of people live within walking distance of a food source such as a farm and those places would be overrun or brutally defended. All that said, I don't see that getting excited and worried over the possibility of a catastrophic flare is realistic or productive. The current warming of the planet is potentially far more destructive and is very real; we should concentrate on that and simply try to prepare for a flare without getting too worried about it.

I love the subtlety of this statement: "Our continued existence on this planet suggests that it wasn't in fact the end of days"

Love the long format. I kept thinking it was over and it wasn't. I'm very familiar with the subject but I learned quite a bit from this. Nice job!

You have a real talent for turning dull science and history into pure poetry. I follow all of your channels and share them too. I just wanted to say Bravo! I look forward to the next one!

And now for another reason of "why I cant just go sleep peacefully?"

Must say you have an excellent voice for this type of video, it's calm and not all over the place with volume and such.

I find these videos utterly engrossing, they are at the same time fascinating in their content as well as captivating in terms of one's imagination. I cannot recommend this series highly enough...

The scripts and narration in this series are absolutely first rate. Among the best of any documentaries I've seen, and I've seen plenty. Looking forward to more!

Another great recap of an important scientific phenomenon. You guys are keeping the tradition of great science documentaries alive!

I don’t know how I found this channel but I’m sooooo glad I did! Truly amazing!

Fascinating topic presented by a captivating and immersive narration. Edit: and yes, the ending is a bit worrying.

Interesting. This might be a solution as well to the Fermi Paradox, in which most stars (possibly including our own) will become too violent for a civilization to be able to become advanced enough to leave its star/send radio waves out for any appreciable length of time.

For me, personally, you're a better narator than David Attenborough. Keep up the great work!

Much better than the American documentaries who keep repeating the same thing over and over again throughout the documentary and waste so much of your time. They only have about 15 minutes from every hour with useful content (especially the Discovery channel) lol.

Great video Kelly brothers! You guys are good at youtube and you make good content. Keep up the great work, I appreciate your uploads

Dude this series is so underrated, your doing an amazing job and please keep up with the amazing videos! :)

Another top notch video. The narrator is a natural, with a voice made for narration, and the researcher really knows her stuff and has a way of presenting them to people with no scientific background in a way that is accessible. Kudos to both! The one small "thing" (not exactly a "beef", more of a "pet peeve") I can object to, but this is not your "fault" alone, everyone somehow does this (maybe it is the "legacy" of the American TV of the last 50 years?); speaking about how the next "super flare" COULD wipe out our electronic infrastructure - and it COULD! - but making it sound like it WILL, 100%. Since it happened once it will happen again BUT many things have to "align" perfectly for a repeat performance (the intensity and duration of the flare, the alignment of the Earth relative to the Sun at a specific point in time, the speed of the ejecta, the list is quite long). I guess in, say, one thousand years it will happen again but can we say for sure that the NEXT one is going to "kill" our civilization? I guess not. Still, this minor "thing" of mine aside, a great video once again!!

Absolutely love this series! Thanks for making it

I recognize the music at Part 4: Rachmaninov’s Prelude in c♯ minor. One of my favorite pieces to play, the last page or two is quite a doozy.

If anyone is curious, we went through a Carrington event last month but got lucky in the fact that the sun launched it the opposite direction of Earth. Still had some interesting effects though

Great to see the history of the Carrington event. Great job of reenactments and visuals.. Thanks

I love this series, great graphics and explanations. I hope you make many more. Fascinating!

Really enjoying the series. Production and information quality are tops.

I really like your ability to tell history in an interesting way. I also like that you tell the history of the scientists or other people who were involved in the discovery.

One of the most detailed explanations of the Carrington event i have seen, 10/10

Great series! Deserves a lot more viewers!

Never subbed faster! Keep this awesome work up, this channel is about to blow up😄

I am so pleased to have found this channel. Immensely informative and educational. Brilliant,

Tremendous series, well presented, easy to understand and great visuals. These would be great teaching aids at schools in science.

I really enjoy your channel, thanks. During my education as a geologist in the early 80’s, the hypothesis for the generation of heat in the inner core was the entrainment of heavy, radionuclides in the core. During the early formation of the earth, the heavier elements were mostly concentrated by gravitational differentiation into the inner layers of the planet. As these radionuclides decay, they produce heat energy, thus powering the convection of heat in the liquid outer core.

Excellent educational series. Very glad I found you, will definitely promote.

Ok, you broke my mind, last thing I need to think about is a history destroying solar flair. Great video

Great series so far. I especially enjoy your history lessons as a build-up to our standing knowledge today. Where do you get your video clips from? Had to pause it at 17:39 due to the mirror imaging of the ground topography lol.

A fantastic series.

Your videos are leaps and bounds better than most others. Great work. These videos will bring in millions of views... eventually.

This is one of the best channels on all of RU-vid.

Radioactive materials like uranium and thorium tend to be heavy. Could they have settled into the core and now heat it by radioactive decay?

Love this series. Future topics I'd really like to see: What Earth was LIKE at points very far in the past. You did a great job of this in the Hadean video. Some things get too much attention, like the age of dinosaurs, but I want to see a more full picture of what Earth was like when nearly all life was still in the ocean, and outside of the ocean was nothing but moss. I think it was moss or something like that, you have a great researcher will can turn my spotty memories into facts for a video. What about plant life before trees and flowers? Forests today are mostly trees and flowers, but those are relatively recent aren't they? Hundreds of Millions ago it was giant ferns and stuff, right? Also, wasn't there a time before land vertebrates where life on land was all insects? These are the sorts of periods of Earth's past that don't get enough attention. It's almost like an alien planet to us today, but yet with certain familiar things, because it's our own past.

Very well done! 🤙🏻 Definatly worth sharing!

Thanks for such outstanding documentaries. The quality is first rate.

Very good explanation of Earth magnetic field great

I believe that since these reversals have happened in the geological past and life survived it, it is reasonable to assume it would survive the next one. But, the comforts we enjoy now would be gone for quite a while. I work for an electric company and the massive transformers in the nations substations would be fried and there are simply not enough of them to replace quickly. We are going to need to accept that it’s very likely that all our power and internet will be off for at least a year. We will have to learn to live without it. It would probably be a very good thing for us to experience, even though it will suck. It will teach us not to be as petty as we have been and we will need to come together as brothers to try and comfort our elderly and children. To stop bickering over politics and race and all the other bullshit.

The sky has been falling ever since humans found out they could scare each other with BS.

Well done. Intelligibel and interesting presentation of the topic! Fairly comprehensive and informative!

Eureka! This just gave me an idea. Maybe the key to interstellar space travel is in the "stella's" themselves. If you can build a massive cannon in space that can harness the energy caused by coronal mass ejections, you can perhaps create a beam of energy which could push a small craft to relativistic speeds. Possible?

Well done. Thanks for helping wake everyone to this. My only criticism is that there are large columns of solid material extending into the mantle. It isn't perfectly concentric rings like a tree

I am taking a geology course right now and it’s so amazing to see what I’ve learned and what I’m going to learn! I love it!

Thanks for bring all these ideas together.

PBS, hire this man.

As for the concentric spheres of earth's interior, I am reminded of Don Scott's model of a Birkeland Current as counter-rotating concentric rings(magnetic flux tubes). These structures are a type of double-layer seen in a plasma where charge separates(Alfvenn). Two currents can produce a pinch effect, Faraday observed this in physical wires and has been replicated in plasma labs and produce a plasmoid, a tiny but highly charged ball of energy which draws heavy elements to its core with lighter elements on the surface. This self-organizing ability of a plasma is integral to the development of life, in my opinion. I posit that it is a plasmoid in earth's core fed via the incoming electrons at the poles that produces the 6000* temperatures. And the concentric spheres are a product of double layering seen also in the chemistry of earth's atmosphere. Speaking of Birkeland, it was he who took those Terrallas, the magnetized ball and put it in a vacuum chamber, via the experiments he produced the rings of saturn, the auroras and posited electric corpuscles in space(solar wind). Taking this a step further, the Safire project has by manipulating these double layers produced 14 times thermal over-unity. We live in interesting times.

awesome edit and awesome content, thank you

I just subscribed ..you got Straight to the point without beating around the bush !!!! Great Video

The way this year has gone, I would be surprised if our magnetic shield disappeared tomorrow!

When I get worried about things that can kill me, I take comfort in the thought that only one thing can do it.

Superb series - thank you.

How its possible that this channel has so few subscribers???? Its an absolute gem!

It's an electromagnet. The current is equatorial so the magnetic appears vertically, south to north, usually.

You deserve 10 times more subs

This is what I call a great content, thank you so much!

I really love this channel. The content is presented so well.

The Magnetic field is generated as a result of the Birkland Current that directly attaches us to the sun. This in turn passes through the earths core witch is spinning and creates the magnetic field.

I remember reading something about magnetic anomalies at sea long ago.. that the field strenght is weakened, and also reversed in polarity some plases, the moest famous and studied of these was somewhere soutwest of South-Africa i think,, and there was a theory that this possebly could be an indicator of exatly what you describe in the later part of this video... (total polarity reversal). I have a hard time seeing myself live long enough for this to be a serious problem within my liftime tho... But a direct hit from a superflare, protuberanses and a corona mass ejection is ofc an other matter. It would realy hurt humanity today! We, as a sosiety, are much less resilient to technology-faliures today, then we were in 1859. Love your videos 👍

Your stuff is legit man. I love it. Keep it up.

When discussing the core of the Earth, you have to mention the collision that occurred with the Proto Planet Theia. Not only did the collision give us our orbit-stabilizing Moon, and the tides that possibly gave rise to life, but it increased the size of our original core. Mars wasn't so lucky and its core cooled quickly due to the smaller size of the body.

Yes, if the magnetic poles reach a point during the reversal flip, the weaker magnetic fields could be a disaster for us. Also how long we would be in a weaker magnetic protection while the pole flip is going on. Hope I am not around if this should happen.

This is probably what I worry about most, as far as impactful events. If you sit and imagine what would happen if all the lights go out, and all electronics were to get fried.. we'd have to rebuild everything, from refrigerators to phones, to the equipment and machines that make them. Everything we know requires electricity. We treat it like an eternal life force that will always provide, but in actuality it's far from guaranteed and highly susceptible to nature. For most people its sudden loss would be the equivalent of taking a newborn baby away from its mother and telling it it has to survive on its own. This is how dependant we are on electronics. Everything. Everyone in the world without electricity for a long time, the dire consequences and real possibility of this should make the world concerned with having a safety net, but no one sees past their own little bubble.

Fantastic content! Keep it up and you'll get to 1 million plus subscribers

Another great production !

Wonderful!

This is so good. It’s terrifying too.

EXCELLENT VIDEO. THANK YOU.

This was my fav episode, so well written

Actually the magnetic needle points between two magnetic north poles, one over Canada one over Siberia. A secret hidden in plain sight. So the magnetic chaos with poles all over Earth is probably very close.

Great series so far, my only comment on this is that modern satellites have very little to do with global communication. M hop satellite communication can add one to three seconds latency, which on a bidirectional communication is extremely noticeable. Satellites also have extremely limited bandwidth so nothing like our modern internet would be possible over that. Most global communication is handled via extremely long underwater intercontinental cables. Those cables are shielded quite nicely by the ridiculous volume of water that we call Oceans. Knocking out all the satellites would disrupt weather measurements, legacy broadcast channels and any remote homes internet.

as usual.. seriously well done

what a wonderful channel, I hope they make videos forever

Who is the artist that does the thumbnails for your videos? Love your work!!

There was a study on whether humans can detect the earth's magnetic field. Surprisingly, yes. Strong changes in magnetism in a room caused differing levels of changes in brain activity for different people. Veritasium did a video on it.

this is amazing. the dramas flow so smoothly. im considering making popcorn.

Simply outstanding!👍👍👍

Why is this information not more mainstream. This is possibly related to what Tesla spent his time researching. Reminds me of the "Oklo reactor" in Africa. It was a naturally occurring system that functioned as a nuclear reactor that we only discovered because of "missing uranium". The uranium was missing because it had been used up.

I have a question. Given that a piece of steel will lose magnetic effects when heated to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, how does iron in the dynamo produce magnetism when it is well over that temperature? Does it have something to do with the inner earth pressures? Love the channel by the way!

Very nice. Thx

In other words, if you wake up one morning and your phone/coffee machine isn't working, but you can see auroras in the sky... prepare to eat your neighbors. ;-)

Interested ? Have a look at the electric universe theory 😉

I would like to see precautionary measures we can take about solar flares.

ı am incredibly happy to find this channel. thanky you much

True gem of a channel.