Earth’s Changing Magnetic Poles – Any Threat?

March 10, 2003  Cambridge, Massachusetts - Four thousand miles down below our planet's surface is the center of the earth's iron core, depicted as brown in the illustration below. There is so much pressure there that the iron is hard from the center outward for about 746 miles (1200 km). But then it begins to melt and flow like porridge cooking in the yellow area that pushes upward as orange magma. That moving, melted iron also produces the magnetic fields that surround the earth and upon which much of earth's surface life, satellites and space technology depend upon for orientation and for protection. If magnetic fields did not trap highly energetic particles racing from the sun, all kinds of damage could be done to living organisms and space technologies.