NASA: Earth’s Magnetic poles are ‘Switching’

Mr Jakosky explained that Mars had been blasted by solar winds, which had stripped it of its atmosphere, for billions of years since the beginnings of our solar system.

He said: “When the polar shift happens the Earth will have no magnetic field for about 200 years.”

During that time the Sun’s solar blasts are expected to strip away at our atmosphere as they did on Mars billions of years ago.

But he thankfully added that 200 years would not be long enough for the Sun to significantly reduce the atmosphere for life to die out.

There are even doom-mongers have predicted that a swap of the magnetic poles from north to south would shift the continents so fiercely it would trigger mass earthquakes, rapid climate change, extinctions and global destruction.

Geologists have said the shift event has happened a number of times in Earth’s history – with the last one 780,000 years ago during the stone age.

Alan Thompson, head of geomagnetism at the British Geological Survey, said during previous flips: “no worldwide shifting of continents or other planet-wide disasters occurred, as geoscientists can testify to from fossil and other records.”

Earthquakes aside, there is a scientific belief that as we head towards a reversal – which could be less than 1,000 years away, Earth’s magnetic field will dangerously weaken leaving us at the mercy of solar storms when radiation and X-rays are ejected from the Sun towards our planet.

This autumn www.express.co.uk reported how there are fears if there is another major solar flare as powerful as the last recorded strongest in Victorian times, trillions of pounds of damage could be done to the economy by power and communication blackouts.

The most dramatic changes that occur when the poles reverse is a very large decrease of the total field intensity

Jean-Pierre Valet, who conducts research on geomagnetic reversals at the Institute of Earth Physics

But it is scientifically accepted out magnetic field has significantly weaker over the past 160 years and it is believed this could mean we are heading for the next big polar reversal, which could happen any time between 1,000 to 10,000 years to finish.