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Question
Can you please explain the polar shift theory? Supposedly the earth's crust does a 180 degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours. Furthermore, this is stated to be a regular occurrence in Earth's geologic history and has to do with our solar system dipping beneath the galactic equator. Is there any merit to it?
I will try to explain. This is one of the craziest lies that is being promulgated by the 2012 conspiracy theorists -- worse in many ways than the Nibiru hoax. It is totally absurd, and completely untrue, but still the story spreads and is frightening people. First, on the matter of a sudden reversal in the rotation of Earth: this is impossible. It has never happened and never will. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, these scam artists sometimes pull a bait-and-shift to try to fool you. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly with a magnetic reversal roughly every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn't cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway. But they frighten you by falsely claiming that a magnetic reversal is coming soon (like in 2012) and that this is the same as, or will trigger, a reversal of rotational poles. The bottom line is: (1) Rotation direction and magnetic polarity are not related. (2) There is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon, or to anticipate any bad effects on life when it does eventually happen. (3) A sudden shift in rotational pole with disastrous consequences is impossible. Also, none of this has anything to do with the galactic equator or any of the other nonsense about 2012 that appears on these Internet conspiracy theory sites.
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
January 15, 2009
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