EARTH CHANGES

Magnetic field is fading

In the movie 'The Core,' Earth's molten core stops spinning, with dire effects on the magnetic field that protects the planet from energy-charged particles from the Sun. People with pacemakers fall dead in the street; the Golden Gate Bridge collapses.
Scientists have known for some time that the magnetic field is in fact collapsing, at a rate faster than it would if flows of molten iron in the core had stopped completely.
And while the consequences would be nowhere near as catastrophic as those in the movie, geophysicists increasingly wonder whether the magnetic field has begun one of its occasional reversals that in the next few thousand years might lead to compasses pointing south instead of north.