RCIS Lecture: The Spinning Magnet

With Alanna Mitchell, acclaimed science journalist, author and contributor to CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks.

A cataclysmic planetary phenomenon is gathering force deep within the Earth. The magnetic North Pole will eventually trade places with the South Pole. Satellite evidence suggests to some scientists that the move has already begun, but most still think it won’t happen for many decades. All agree that it has happened many times before and will happen again. But this time it will be different. It will be a very bad day for modern civilization.

Award-winning science journalist Alanna Mitchell’s delightful storytelling introduces enchanting characters from investigations into magnetism in thirteenth-century France to the discovery in the Victorian era that electricity and magnetism emerge from the same force. No one has ever told so eloquently how the Earth itself came to be seen as a magnet, spinning in space with two poles, and that those poles dramatically, catastrophically reverse now and then…

The recent finding that Earth’s magnetic force field is decaying faster than previously thought, raising fears of an imminent pole reversal, ultimately gives The Spinning Magnet a spine-tingling urgency. When the poles switch, a process that takes many years, Earth is unprotected from solar radiation storms that would, among other things, wipe out all electromagnetic technology. No satellites, no Internet, no smartphones–maybe no power grid at all.

Alanna Mitchell offers a beautifully crafted narrative history of ideas and science that readers of Stephen Greenblatt and Sam Kean will love.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Reservations: Not required
Organized by: The Royal Canadian Institute for Science
Location: Noel Ryan Auditorium, Ground Floor, Mississauga Central Library, 301 Burnhamthorpe Road W. Parking under the library is free after 6 p.m. Enter via the ramp accessed from the southbound lane on Duke of York Boulevard between City Centre Drive and Burnhamthorpe Road.

https://www.rciscience.ca/events-1/2018/1/16/the-spinning-magnet