 |
 |
17 Jun 2002
A special tribute was paid to former President of Portugal, Mario Sores and Professor Doctor Eugen Seibold of Germany for their long term commitment and support to the ocean sciences, on the occasion of the JOIDES Resolution, the research vessel for the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), docking in the Port of Lisbon, Portugal on April 18.
During the most recent voyage, scientists recovered core samples containing the most detailed and complete record of Earth's magnetic field variability for the last 1.2 million years. Although Earth's magnetic field is known to reverse occasionally, such that a compass would point to the south rather than the north, it has been thought that the field was rather stable for the past 800,000 years, and that it has been in the "normal" mode.
"We have discovered that during the present mode of normal magnetism there may have been as many as 12 excursions in the magnetic field, each of a few thousand years duration, where the magnetic field either approached near reversed conditions, or was fully reversed," explains Dr. Lloyd D. Keigwin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and co-chief scientist for the expedition.
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| © 2024 SPIE Europe |
|
