Xref: utzoo sci.bio:1012 sci.misc:1077 rec.birds:485
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!wucs1!wucs2!slustl!slu70!guy
From: guy@slu70.UUCP (Guy M. Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.misc,rec.birds
Subject: Re: animals and Earth's magnetic reversal
Message-ID: <115@slu70.UUCP>
Date: 21 Mar 88 18:12:54 GMT
References: <7387@ihlpa.ATT.COM> <460@amethyst.UUCP> <20@denali.UUCP> <5792@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Organization: St. Louis Univ., St. Louis, MO
Lines: 12
Summary: geomagnetism

In article <5792@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, bpdickson@trillium.waterloo.edu (Brian P. Dickson) writes:
> some scientists from several disciplines had worked together to produce a very
> Theorem in brief: Every 30 million years or so, another star (our sun's evil
I don't know a single researcher in geomagnetism who believes this theory.
As a researcher in the field myself, I either know most of the major players
or have heard them speak or read their papers.
The people who originally proposed it were not geophysicists and were rather
hazy about a lot of relevant data.
It is not possible to conclusively rule the idea out at present but most
of us are *very* skeptical. There is, for instance, no evidence of any
periodicity in the reversal record (see several recent papers by McFadden,
Merrill, and co-authors).