What would happen if the world flipped its axis making North...South and South...North?

Seems every one has taken the logical aproach and assumed that the question wes refering to the reversal of the magnetic poles,.... I myself prefer to focus on the actual world turning upside down,..."flipping its axs" as the question states. I'm voting a great big yes on this one, BRING IT ON! Then the on the edge idiots would finaly be right about something realy turning the world up side down, and the media pundits could start raving about who's fault it was and how the carbon foot print affected it.Al gore could form a global coalition to research it and they could have a world televised telethon to raise money for it,... george clooney could host,... kanye westcould tell us if it affected black people,... and weather or not george bush cared.

Meanwhile,.... I DONT CARE,... CAUSE IT WOULD BE SUMMER IN MY HEMISPHERE, AND I COULD QUIT LOOKING AT ALL THIS DAMN SNOW!

I see that this question showed up as "10 hours ago", and there's a similar one (about the world suddenly starting to turn in the other direction) marked "11 hours ago". (Sorry, but I'm kind of punchy from hunkering down and staying out of the ice and rain we're having). As I said in the other similar question, people would get dizzy.

The difference between this question and the other one would be that people who wanted to be going South would end up going North, which would mean a person headed for Brazil from Mexico would end up in Nova Scotia; and the person headed for Louisiana from Wisconsin would end up (oh no! ) in - guess where - Alaska! (and I don't think too many people want that to happen to them ).(Again - sorry.

Third storm in a few days, and I'm going nuts at this point. :) ).

If so, the Earth's magnetic poles are going to flip over, as they have done before many times. This next swapping-over of the magnetic compass direction of North and South will occur. However, the evidence is quite strong that the change will take place at a rate appropriate to the time-constant of such changes in the past.

The magnetic strength has been reducing gradually for the past few thousand years, and over a longer period it does switch over. On average, there is a changeover about every 200,000 years, but it's not a regular event. Sometimes the magnetic poles can switch over twice in 10,000 years.

Sometimes they'll stay the same for 10 million years. It is a reasonable guess that there will be another flip-over in the next few thousand years, but it's by no means certain when it will happen. However, it's a reasonably safe bet it's not going to happen in 4 years!

When the magnetic poles switch over, it will be tricky to navigate with a compass. Homing pigeons will get lost more often, and maps will be more puzzling because of people wondering which way up they should be.It's also true that because of the decreased magnetosphere, there will be more radiation arriving on the Earth. That doesn't mean we're all going to be zapped.

Plenty of radiation arrives anyway. The magnetosphere does not stop it; it just reduces it. Mass-extinction events are typical in the geological history of the Earth (every so-many hundreds of millions of years).

However they are associated with big cataclysms, not the changing of the magnetic poles. Animals have survived magnetic pole changes before, and they'll survive them again. Humans will also survive, if they don't do anything really stupid.

In contrast to magnetic polar shifts, the changing direction of the AXIS is a much bigger effect. Looking back at what the Earth's axis has done, it is notably regular. Currently the axis is at about 23.4 degrees.

This causes the seasons. The axis points towards Polaris currently, but it changes, in a regular period of about 26,000 years. In addition, the axis varies in the number of degrees.

In the past 700,000 years it has oscillated at a steady cycle, between about 22 degrees and about 24.5 degrees. This is quite regular, and the coming and going of Ice Ages is linked to the axis of tilt.

Dave,I think its pretty clear what would happen. All of our magnets would seize their attractive function, leading our children's art creations to fall off our collective refrigerators. In witness of their hard work occupying position on the dirty kitchen floor, they might develop a feeling of artistic worthlessness.

The broken hearts of our youngest generation would be a global phenomenon. The result would be a generational gap of creative affluence. It can be safely concluded that a reversal of polarity on earth would have disastrous ramifications in the creative arts.

Life will be duller indeed. Cheers, Santi.

I made a hub about this subject hubpages.com/hub/axisflipped.

The birds would sure be confused and so would my wife.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.