When you picture a magnetic field, you probably think of a sketch from grade school: a magnet with loops from the north to the south pole. By and large, this model holds up, and the earth’s magnetic field operates in the same way. But what if this hadn’t always been the case? New research suggests that, in fact, the earth may have had more than two poles for a tumultuous period of its history. Thus, instead of the symmetrical and familiar magnetic model, half a billion years ago, the earth’s magnetism was a messy model of poles and fields. But how did this work exactly? And how did researchers come to this conclusion? Magnetic to the Core Here’s the simple version of the incredibly complex scientific research on this subject: the earth’s magnetic field is created by the liquid iron swirling around the smaller, solid iron core of the earth. While it’s easy to assume that this had always been the case, staff scientist Peter Driscoll recently released a paper challenging this assumption. Evidently, long ago in earth’s history, there was a period when a portion of the liquid iron deep within the planet began to solidify -- this caused a massive disruption in the magnetic polarity we take for granted. What’s more, geological records from our home planet indicate that earth experienced magnetic fluctuations around 650 million years ago. Even more puzzling, records indicate that the fluctuations returned to normal relatively quickly. Until now, scientists had almost no explanation for these changes.   Driscoll’s research offers a plausible hypothesis that could explain the planet’s geological record. Not only this, but his team also suggests that after the transitive portion of the earth’s core solidified, poles could have returned to normal. Thus, this research could explain not only why the magnetic fields initially went haywire, but also how they relaxed so suddenly. At worst, this research draws some attention to a field that has otherwise been overlooked by generations of scientists. At best, it could have widespread implications and explain other phenomena in the earth’s geological history!