Earth's magnetic poles could flip within a single human lifetime

What if north became south and south became north? Although it sounds unlikely, it's actually happened before, when the Earth's magnetic fields flipped.

In fact, it's happened many times in the Earth's history, including around 780,000 years ago. And it's about to happen again, within a few thousand years.

This flip, however, is not a slow and gradual process. In fact, it happens relatively quickly, within 100 years, about the span of a human lifetime. We now know this, thanks to research by an international team of scientists that studied evidence from the last magnetic flip.