[baudrunner]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet's poles for the first time in nearly a million years, scientists said.

150 years ago, the instruments used to measure the strength of the earth's magnetic field must have been considerably more primitive than anything around today. Frankly, I don't actually know how anyone can make that statement. However, I can say this, that since the iron age began, so much iron has been mined and distributed around the globe as usable materials that this factor alone would most certainly be enough to reduce the strength of the earth's magnetic field by 10% since the strength of the earth's magnetic field is the result of the concentration of iron deposits in its crust. That is no mystery.

Furthermore, only severe cataclysmic events can flip the earth's magnetic poles. Take a look at a satellite image map of the earth (the National Geographic Society published a beauty in 2004) and note the streak of barren desolation cutting across the planet at about 25 degrees north latitude in North Africa right across through Saudi Arabia and clear through to the Gobi Desert in China at about 45 degrees north latitude. What you see there is the end result of a major cataclysmic event, possibly a collossal solar flare or prominence or possibly a cosmic collision, that left the world as you see it today. That event may very well have flipped the world around, or tilted it, or acted on the magnetic poles to switch them around, who knows? But such an event is what it would take to reverse the poles. It could not possibly be a spontaneous event, so don't hold your breath waiting for it.