Magnetic Shock

[earls]

Sure you do, vertical boundaries - walls of rock between 100' and 200'. If you were making a contour map and had a hole in the ground 10' deep, wouldn't the edge of the hole be the contour line? There is a physical difference represented between the inside and the outside of the contour line.

Does the intensity of the magnetic field give it depth?

[Lloyd]

* You said: "Those animations above clearly show 'magnetic reconnection', no? What do you call it when the field lines merge? ... The lines represent a boundary between intensities, no? The boundaries change as the pockets of intensity change in strength."
* Those lines are mathematical abstractions. Do you actually believe in magnetic reconnection? Magnetic field lines don't break and reconnect. The lines are only like contour lines. They only show places where the field is of the same value. Immediately adjacent to the graph lines the value is slightly lesser or greater. Actual magnetic fields are not linear or planar. They're spatial, taking up a volume. The volume is like the layers of an onion, where the innermost layer has the greatest intensity and each successive layer has lesser intensity. The volume isn't necessarily spherical; it can be elongated etc, depending on conditions, like solar wind.
* The graph labeled "Vertical Component" shows the magnetic field intensity on Earth's surface from about 1840 to 1990. The other graph, labeled "Declination", shows how far off of true north compass readings were from 1600 something till about 1990. You might say the lines of the Declination graph pinch off and reconnect, but those are only mathematical representations, not physical reality. And that graph doesn't measure magnetic field intensity.

[vukcevic]

Let me clarify my graph.
If you have a magnetographs left in a fixed place, recording magnetic field on a paper track, taking one sample every 10 years, than you get a single line starting at 1600 and finishing at 1990.
Now lets assume a hypothetical case were you had 36 of these, positioned them along 85th parallel North (just of north pole) spaced at 10 degrees, and left them there recording magnetic intensity for the same period, each would record a single line, composite of all would be my graph.
You may ask : why 85 N? If it is 90N there would be only 1 line. Any further South, field becomes even more diverse and dispersed, not giving an easily observed trend as well as some indication of spatial diversity.

[jjohnson]

I just knew, as the Night Follows Upon the Day, when I saw the movie clip with the iso-magnetic lines that "magnetic reconnection" would follow. Thanks for the lucid explanation again, Mike H. Contour lines are just that - points of equal value connected by lines, and you can't see those any more than weather isobars or topographical contours when you walk about the 'verse. Except maybe high tide lines - those are close to a visible sea level contour line, but that's the exception proving the rule. If an island slowly sinks into the seas, the water-land contour shrinks and then disappears, right? And if two submerged but adjacent mountain peaks rise up out of the water far enough, their separate contours will merge! Doh! No magic there. Thanks, too, Vukcevic. You are very good at bringing insights and projections with real data into this forum, and data are what we need to refine our ideas and understanding. Cheers.

J

[Komorikid]

Is it just me or do the two animated graphs look like weather patterns?

Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn of http://www.weatheraction.com is using magnetic effects for his weather predictions. Predictions that to date are running at around 80% accuracy.
The technique uses predictable aspects of solar activity - particle and magnetic effects from the Sun - as the basis for forecasting weather many months and even years in advance.