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Published online 9 March 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news070305-14
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Earth's magnetic field reversals mimicked in the lab
The switching of the poles can be studied in a tub of molten metal.
Every few hundred thousand years or so, the Earth's north and south magnetic poles switch places. No one knows what triggers these geomagnetic field reversals, but a team in France has now reproduced them in the lab.
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