Admission of Anomalies

Something Weird is Going on Below Us
Sunday Times, July 18, 2004, South Africa

Satellites in low-Earth orbit over Southern Africa are already showing signs of radiation damage suffered as a result of the Earth's magnetic field weakening above our part of the planet. Commenting on the New York Times report, Kotze said that the decay in the Earth's magnetic field was becoming increasingly apparent in "the South Atlantic anomaly", a huge deviation in the Earth's magnetic field discovered with the help of the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory. This month, the European Space Agency (ESA) approved a multimillion-euro space mission, called Swarm, to measure the anomaly, which stretches from Southern Africa towards South America. The observatory has also recorded a faster-growing deviation between true north and magnetic north over Southern Africa during the past 10 years, drifting steadily westward. Taken together, the blip and this drift point to an imminent reversal in the Earth's north-south magnetic alignment. Kotze said the anomaly was the result of "things happening" far below the Earth's surface.