(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1981-06)
Denham, Charles R.
Viscous decay of magnetic
polarity messages in rocks is slowed 3- to-6
fold by the reversing nature of the geomagnetic
field, compared with the effect
expected in a field that is constantly
polarized oppositely to the original
remanence. The process is studied
analytically and numerically for the known
geomagnetic polarity sequence, as well as
for simulated sequences having constant-length
and Poisson-distributed lengths of
polarity intervals. For equal average-interval
lengths, the random Poisson
reversing process causes more rapid decay
than does the periodic reversing process.
