Scientists have stated that the Sun’s magnetic poles are only months away from reversing polarity.  The apocalypse is nigh.  This is going to be like every Star Trek episode where Geordi or Dax or whoever attempts to reverse the polarity of some gewgaw and science runs amok only supersized.  I fully expect the entire solar system to be transported into another universe as a result of this occasion.

We are, of course, ignoring the fact that the Sun does this every 11 years or so and I have already lived through 3 of these polarity switches.  That’s boring, though.  It’s much better to imagine massive upheavals and global chaos as a result of events that are long enough apart that our memories fade from the last event.  I’m pretty sure I just rehashed the formula for every trend known to man.

Really, though, all this means is the magnetic sphere that surrounds the solar system out well past Pluto gets all wibbly-wobbly forming lower period, higher frequency waves during the event.  This wibbly-wobblyness is actually good news for Earth and astronauts as it tends to protect us better from the high energy particles from outside the solar system that cause bad things to happen to astronauts and electronics.  It also can cause space weather to act up which means a greater likelihood of aurorae and other coronal mass ejection related phenomena.  This is bad for astronauts and electronics.  So I’m just going to call this whole event a wash.  Unless I’m missing something…