Could geomagnetic reversals and excursions relate to extinctions and collapses of civilizations?

The stimulus for these considerations came from a new perspective to climate change and other phenomena. They could be argued to reflect the ethical and moral decay of our civilization. Could there be a much deeper reason for these phenomena and could they be unavoidable and implied by the basic physics? To put it provocatively: could our ethical and moral standards correlate with our physical environment in some sense?

Climate warming and other phenomena that cause disorder in the biosphere bring to mind the second law of thermodynamics. Could a deeper explanation be based on the second law of thermodynamics of its generalization. We turn too much ordered energy into dis-ordered energy. Could carbon dioxide emissions be a secondary phenomenon?

I did not take these considerations very seriously because it is difficult to see the reduction to the atomic level. The loss of order also manifests itself in a rather abstract form, for example on a social level as violence and inequality. Recently, however, I saw a mention of a study in which I claimed that the increase in entropy produced by human energy consumption starts to be significant at the atomic level. Could the decline of civilization have an explanation in terms of a generalization of the second law forced by TGD?

Some interesting observations

There are several interesting observations which have stimulated the ideas to be discussed in the sequel.

1. The Earth's magnetic field is changing rapidly near the poles (see this). Interestingly, global warming is fastest near the poles. It is expected that the direction of the field can change within a very short period of time. The shortest known polarization change has occurred in a year and global polarization reversals can last hundreds of years. Bjarne Lorentz has proposed on basis of correlations between temperature and the strength of the global magnetic field (see this) that the geomagnetic reversal could relate to global warming because it no longer protects the biosphere from cosmic radiation.

   This proposal however forces us to give up the standard view about dynamo mechanism as the origin of the Earth's magnetic field. The dynamo mechanism has severe difficulties: in particular, the magnetic field should have disappeared a long time ago. The TGD view of magnetic fields deviates dramatically from the Maxwellian view and leads to an explanation for the stability of the Earth's magnetic field and also predicts a mechanism for the polarization reversals (see this) . This mechanism has been also applied to the polarization reversals of the solar magnetic field (see this).

   In TGD, the magnetic bodies of ordinary physical systems carry macroscopically quantum coherent phases of matter being able to control the associated systems consisting of ordinary matter. TGD inspired quantum biology relies on this notion. Therefore there are good motivations to ask whether the correlation between the weakening of magnetic field and climate warming could exist.

   Mainstream scientists do not take the proposal seriously (see this) since there seems to be no standard physics mechanism justifying the claim. Also I am personally skeptical about the proposal that standard physics mechanisms could relate global warming and geomagnetic reversal.

2. In the last global reversal of the direction of the magnetic field about 41,000 years ago, the Neanderthals disappeared, although the reversal was short-lived about 250 years. The average period between reversals between long lasting global reversals is 450,000 years. For short lasting global reversals created in excursions, the average period is 10 times shorter, about 45,000 years (see this). There can also be local excursions and the strength and direction of the magnetic field of Earth indeed fluctuates.

   \item Callahan have studied magnetic fields around the world (see this) and noticed that the magnetic field and as a consequence the Schumann resonance can be very weak, for instance in the Near East. There are serious social problems in these areas. Why would the strength of the magnetic field correlate with the coherence the social atmoshere? Could the magnetic field strength correlate with the coherence of collective consciousness?

Could the entropization of field bodies lead to magnetic reversals and excursions explaining extinctions and declines of civilizations

The above considerations lead to the key idea.

1. Magnetic bodies control biomatter in TGD. Specifically, the Earth's magnetic body, which would determine the collective consciousness of the Earth's and also affect the consciousness of living organisms since their magnetic bodies interact with the Earth's magnetic body.The magnetic body of the Sun would be also involved.
2. Could the fundamental cause of the problems of humanity and the biosphere be the increase of entropy at the level of magnetic bodies. The aging magnetic body would be due to entropization. This mechanism could also explain the aging of biological organisms (see this). The entropization would lead to a loss of quantum coherence and the magnetic body would gradually lose control over the processes at the level of the biological body. This would eventually lead to a death struggle of the magnetic body and magnetic body.

   More concretely, the monopole flux tube pairs of the Earth's magnetic field would split to short flux tubes. Later they could fuse back to flux tubes with a reversed direction of magnetic field. The process would be the same as in the reversal of the solar magnetic field.

   As a result, the quantum coherence scales would shorten and the control of the magnetic body over the bio-matter would be lost. Biomatter would be forced to cope without the help of the magnetic body. During sleep a similar situation takes place and during motor activities and sensory input are absent. The decay of the flux tubes can be local or global and the resulting magnetic flux tubes could be long lasting or only temporary.

3. In zero energy ontology (ZEO), the transition period leading to regeneration of the monopole flux tube would correspond to two "big" state function reductions (BSFRs) in macroscopic scale. It can be local or global and also short-term. In BSFR, the magnetic body would lose its consciousness reincarnating with an opposite arrow of time. In the second BSFR it would wake up with the original arrow of time.
4. One life cycle of the Earth's magnetic body would end (or a little more gently, the magnetic Mother Gaia would fall asleep and live in another direction of time). Eventually, a new cycle would begin with a new magnetic field. These cycles are analogous to the counterpart of sunspot cycles with a duration of 11+11 years. Could one think of a year cycle with a period about 45,000 years in which the magnetic field with reverted direction is short lived. For us, it might mean the collapse and rebirth of civilization. One can wonder what our fate in the next reversal is?
5. There are reasons to ask whether our species is approaching extinction. On the other hand, an enormous progress in science and technology is being made at the same time. This paradox applies more generally, as, for example, biologist Jeremy England has observed (see this). Biological evolution is generally accompanied by an increase in entropy. p-Adic vision about cognition leads to exactly this prediction (see this). When the p-adic negentropy associated with quantum entanglement as a measure for the amount of conscious information is large, the standard entropy is also large. The smarter we get, the more we produce entropy.
6. Homo sapiens appeared 300,000 years ago. The oldest Neandertal fossils are 430,000 years old. The most recent global and long-lasting direction change, the Brunhes Matuyama reversal, occurred 780,000 years ago.

   45,000 years is a reasonable estimate for the average period for the magnetic excursions (see this). The last magnetic excursion was 41,000 years ago. The reversal lasted only 250 years but Neanderthals disappeared. Also now, a change in direction is taking place: could it lead to the extinction of our species or at least the destruction of civilization within a few hundred years? If these temporary reversals are periodic, our species would have survived 7 reversals. This gives a cause for optimism. But on the other hand, we are doing our best to destroy our civilization.

Is it possible to estimate time scales for the duration of the magnetic field orientation from basic physics? The durations of the episodes seem random and the durations of the transitions also vary. p-Adic length scale hypothesis suggests that the periods come in powers of two. Surprisingly, also an esoteric view of the evolution of consciousness predicts so called Yuga cycle predicting octaves of the basic period and giving nearly the same quantitative predictions.

Period doubling and stochastic resonance, requiring the presence of a periodic perturbation and noise, could explain these characteristics. The first candidate for the periodic perturbation is the period of equinox precession. A better candidate is the orbital period of planet Sedna to which Earth would have monopole flux tube contacts. The noise would be thermal noise due to the aging of the magnetic body of Earth leading to its "death" and reincarnation by magnetic reversal or excursion.

See the article Could geomagnetic reversals and excursions relate to extinctions and collapses of civilizations? or the chapter Magnetic Bubbles in TGD Universe: part II.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.