--- In [email protected], Bronte Baxter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > <snip> > > Judy wrote: > > Actually, that the earth is losing its magnetic field > > *is* mainstream; see this article on CNN.com from 2003: > > > > http://tinyurl. com/yzfv > > > > Apparently the loss has been measured since 1945. > > > > > Judy wrote: > > The "fringe" aspect has to do with what the loss > > *means*. Most mainstream scientists don't think it > > necessarily means an imminent reversal of the poles, > > much less a reversal of the earth's rotation. (And > > if the earth's rotation were slowing down preparatory > > to stopping and reversing, it would be observable on > > a gross level because the length of a day would > > increase. If the reversal were going to happen in > > 2012, we would already be very well aware of it.) > > > > Bronte: > > I've wondered about that point myself, but how about this angle? > If you take a pendalum hanging from a string and spin it, it goes a > while in one direction. Then, to my recollection (I haven't done this > recently), it suddenly stops, pauses a second, then starts spinning > full-speed in the other direction. There is no slowing down in the > process of stopping, it just stops and reverses. Maybe it's like that > for the earth twirling in space -- reaching the end of whatever force > sent it spinning in the first place, then experiencing the reaction > to that spin in the form of reverse direction. I just tried to make a > pendalum to experiment with this, to make sure I'm remembering > correctly, but I don't have the right stuff to do it with. My > girlfriend has a pendalum, and I've got a call in to her to ask her > to spin the thing and see if it slows down prior to reversal. > > Judy: > I've never heard this! Please let us know what you > find out. Very intriguing. > > Bronte: > I experimented with a couple of different pendalums, and here's what happened when I spun them. They went real fast in one direction, then slowed suddenly, paused, held the stillness, then reversed, twirly slowly for a tad then fast again, only not quite as fast as before. Each time the reversal happened, the pendalum twirled more slowly than the last twirl. All that's to be expected, of course. > > But what I didn't expect was that when the thing was spinning fast, it slowed for longer before its stop than it did when it was spinning more slowly. In other words, the slower the spin, the more sudden the stop. So I wonder, how many times has the earth done a spin and reverse? (If any.) If this has happened multiple times, she could be rotating slowly enough now that the next stop will be quite sudden. The clocks being off (because the day lasts longer than it's supposed to last) might not start happening until quite close to December 21, 2012, I surmise. What do you think, Judy?
Well, to start with, I think I was confused as to what you meant by "spinning." You mean spinning *in place*, right? If so, isn't it the string it's suspended by winding up and then unwinding that causes the weight to stop spinning and change direction? If I've got that right now, I'm having trouble understanding what the equivalent of the string would be in the case of the earth, and what it would be attached to at the other end. Also, the earth's axis that it rotates around has a wobble, like a top (actually several different wobbles), which would have to mean whatever the equivalent is of what the string is attached to moves around in gigantic circles. Plus which, the winding and unwinding of the string is a function of the weight at the end of the string, i.e., the gravitational pull of the earth. What the equivalent of that would be if the earth is the weight at the end of the "string," I don't know. Also, I don't think there's any scientific evidence that the earth's rotation has ever reversed itself in the past. The magnetic poles, yes, but not the rotation. And in any case, the earth's rotation has been slowing down very gradually for hundreds of millions of years (a day used to be 18 hours) from the gravitational pull of the moon. So I gotta say, color me skeptical! But an interesting exercise nonetheless.
