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Discovery: What will happen when the Earth’s poles swap?

Magazines & Reviews

Poles and Spin

20/11/2017 GMT

What will happen when the Earth’s poles swap?

BBC World Service - Discovery, What will happen when the Earth’s poles swap?

What will happen with the Earth’s poles swap? And why do planets spin? Rutherford & Fry investigate.

The Polar Opposite
No one knows why the Earth's magnetic North and South poles swap. But polar reversals have happened hundreds of times over the history of the Earth.
John Turk emailed curiouscases@bbc.co.uk to ask, “when is the next pole swap due and what will happen to us?”
Featuring Prof Lucie Green from Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Dr Phil Livermore from the University of Leeds. 
Plus, astronaut Terry Virts, author of The View from Above, describes his experiences of a strange magnetic glitch in the earth's magnetic field, known as The Bermuda Triangle of Space.

The World That Turns
"Why does the Earth spin?" asks Joe Wills from Accra in Ghana. 
Hannah quizzes cosmologist Andrew Pontzen about the birth of the Solar System. BBC weatherman John Hammond describes the curious things that would happen if the Earth spun the opposite way.
Send your questions to: curiouscases@bbc.co.uk

Picture: The Earth reflecting light from the sun whilst aboard the International Space Station, Credit: Alexander Gerst / ESA via Getty Images

Producer: Michelle Martin

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