alant
Well-Known Member
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So, what your saying, is that we won't get the omnibus edition of the Archers this Sunday!
So, what your saying, is that we won't get the omnibus edition of the Archers this Sunday!
Reversals happen very frequently, by geological standards - every half a million years or so, well below the resolution of the geological time-scale in most situations. So, whatever happens during a reversal, life on earth happily weathers it. The time it takes to reverse the field, while unknown, is definitely short - between a decade and a hundred years or so. So, even if there is an increase in radiation, it probably only affects a few generations of land animals; sea creatures are protected by the water. Studies of the Chernobyl area suggest that radiation induced genetic effects are not that great, looking the the big picture and at populations rather than individuals. You'd expect that, really - most radiation induced genetic abnormalities will either prevent the foetus from developing at all, or will be maladaptive. Very few would be advantageous, and the relative lengths of time involved mean that far more advantageous gene shifts happen during "normal" times than do during a reversal.
For us humans, the big question would be whether or not our electronics could continue to operate during a period when the background "noise" would be increased. GPS satellites already spend at least part of their orbits beyond the Van Allen belts, and also periodically pass through them, so the satellites themselves should be OK. But undoubtedly there would be an increase in the radio noise level, which might drop the signal to noise ratio of systems like GPS below an operable limit.