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This comment is amusing: “Consider the energy needed to move that much mass. What you suggest is that instead of the poles switching the whole damn earth flips. Not plausible. ”
With just my mass standing upon a rope holding a ship to the quayside, I can move a mass a million times greater than my own – bringing the ship back against the fenders. It is not a matter of considering the energy I needed, since it is but a small step. It is a matter of force.
Just because the Earth is massive, this does not mean it cannot flip very quickly.
The Earth is spinning, like a top, and in a zero g, and zero friction environment, it doesn’t take much more than a gradual build up of an opposed magnetic field, to change that top from positive stability to negative stability, until eventually, some minor perturbation triggers the rapid switch, whereby the top wobbles, and then inverts, resuming positive stability, even whilst it retains its angular momentum.
A little force is all it takes to persuade a spinning top that it is better spinning the other way up.
Every 12,000 years the polarity of the ambient magnetic field (about the Earth) inverts…
I agree that a planet passing through a strongly shifting magnetic field could flip as easily as a magnet held in your hand when another magnetic is brought close. But it might take far less energy to just move the crust over the core, if a lubricating layer is created by a weakening magnetic field.
Again, the issue is not the energy, but the force.
A miniscule force can move a super-massive object in free space (zero friction) – it’s just a matter of how long you have to wait for the acceleration to result in a visible movement. Remember: F=MA=M(v-u)/t.
Where is the large force that moves the Earth’s crust – against considerable friction – even when lubricated?
A centripetal force due to dynamic imbalance of accumulated ice? And if so, why shift just a few degrees instead of 90?
The external magnetic field in concert with The Earth’s, causes the planet to flip 180°. The force of that flipping, and of its cessation, is where you find the forces to shift the crust. There is no other sufficiently strong force that will just shift the crust and leave the rest of the planet unperturbed, especially not over a period of 24-48 hours, and on a regular 12,000 year cycle.