the passion of poor carpentry

[_parallaxview_]

Hi! As I'm sure you're all aware, there's a movement amongst archaeologists to attempt to reconcile the biblical account of history with the archaeological record. Now, I'm an intellectually curious young man with, let's face it, no real job. So, I've done some exploring of my own in this vain. The Bible tells us that Christ was trained as a

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[anonymous]

All magnetic objects produce invisible lines of force that extend between the poles of the object. An easy way to visualize this is to spread iron filings on a sheet of paper and place a bar magnet under the paper. The iron filings will arrange themselves around the magnet and along the magnetic field lines.
In the simplest terms, Earth can be thought of as a dipole (2-pole) magnet. Magnetic field lines radiate between Earth's north and south magnetic poles just as they do between the poles of a bar magnet. Charged particles become trapped on these field lines (just as the iron filings are trapped), forming the magnetosphere.
Earth's magnetic field lines are not as symmetrical as those of the bar magnet. The impact of the solar wind causes the lines facing sunward to compress, while the field lines facing away from the Sun stream back to form Earth's magnetotail. The magnetosphere extends into the vacuum of space from approximately 50 to 37,280 miles on the side toward the Sun, and trails out more than 186,500 miles away from the Sun.
The cause of Earth's magnetic field (the surface magnetic field) is not known for certain, but is possibly explained by dynamo theory. The dynamo effect is a geophysical theory that explains the origin of the Earth's main magnetic field in terms of a self-exciting (or self-sustaining) dynamo. In this dynamo mechanism, fluid motion in the Earth's outer core moves conducting material (liquid iron) across an already existing, weak magnetic field and generates an electric current. (Heat from radioactive decay in the core is thought to induce the convective motion.) The electric current, in turn, produces a magnetic field that also interacts with the fluid motion to create a secondary magnetic field. Together, the two fields are stronger than the original and lie essentially along the axis of the Earth's rotation.
The field is approximately a magnetic dipole, with one pole near the geographic north pole and the other near the geographic south pole. An imaginary line joining the magnetic poles would be inclined by approximately 11.3° from the planet's axis of rotation. The strength of the field at the Earth's surface at this time ranges from less than 30 microtesla (0.3 gauss) in an area including most of South America and South Africa to over 60 microtesla (0.6 gauss) around the magnetic poles in northern Canada and south of Australia, and in part of Siberia.
The field is similar to that of a bar magnet, but this similarity is superficial. The magnetic field of a bar magnet, or any other type of permanent magnet, is created by the coordinated motions of electrons (negatively charged particles) within iron atoms. The Earth's core, however, is hotter than 1043 K, the temperature at which the orientations of electron orbits within iron become randomized. Such randomization tends to cause the substance to lose its magnetic field. Therefore the Earth's magnetic field is caused not by magnetised iron deposits, but mostly by electric currents (known as telluric currents).
Another feature that distinguishes the Earth magnetically from a bar magnet is its magnetosphere. At large distances from the planet, this dominates the surface magnetic field. In addition, the magnetized elements within the planetary core are undergoing rotation and are not static.
It has also become known that the earth's magnetic field often times completely changes it's poles. Only happening every 1,000 or so years, it doesn't seem to have an immeadite impact on our daily lives and/or activities. Such discoveries have been made through use of maps of the "magnetic bands". which consist of magnetic history and information recorded within the earth it'self. First discovered by Matthews and Vine in the 1950s when Scripps institute funded further research into the magnetic field. An adapted magnetometer was dragged behind a naval ship to study the paleomagnetism in the earth under the ocean. What was discovered were tiger-like stripes of magnetic history, or "bands". Said bands were of an inconsistand pattern, however. Prompting the consideration and later confirmation that the field shifts it's poles.