Chilling clip from ESA: Earth in 'inverted' moment

The moment the Earth's North and South Poles switched places has been described by European scientists in a chilling audio clip.

In a clip recently released by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Earth's magnetic poles slowly switch places amid a series of deafening sounds that resemble the continuous clashing of rocks, wood and metal.

According to Science Alert, a research team from the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Center for Earth Sciences used data from ESA's Swarm satellite to simulate the moment when the Earth's magnetic poles reversed and turned that data into sound.

The moment the Earth's magnetic poles reversed is "fast-forwarded" in a clip created by European scientists - (Clip: ESA).

Created by liquid metals swirling in the planet's core, Earth's magnetic field can extend tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers into space.

It forms what is called the magnetosphere , which protects us by deflecting solar particles, preventing them from destroying the atmosphere.

In the present orientation, the magnetic field lines form closed loops pointing from south to north on the planet's surface, then from north to south deep inside.

However, occasionally these magnetic field lines randomly reverse polarity. This is a phenomenon called magnetic reversal, which has occurred many times in the planet's history.

If this happened again today, our north compass needle would point to the South Pole.

Earth's magnetic field is chaotic when the magnetic poles reverse - (Graphic image: NASA).

The last magnetic pole reversal event occurred about 41,000 years ago, leaving its mark in the Laschamps lava flow in France, hence the name Laschamps event .

The magnetic field then weakens to only 5% of its current strength and allows a large amount of cosmic rays to enter the Earth's atmosphere.

According to a study published earlier this year, marine ice and sediments retain isotopic signatures that show unusually high cosmic ray bombardment during this period, with beryllium-10 levels doubling during the Laschamps event, for example.

These modified atoms are formed when cosmic rays react with our atmosphere, ionizing the air and burning away the ozone layer.

This is thought to have caused global climate change, which was closely linked to the extinction of large animals in Australia as well as changes in cave use by prehistoric humans.

Understanding these extreme events is important to predict their likelihood of recurrence and their potential impact on the world today, says geophysicist Sanja Panovska from the German Research Center for Geosciences.

It took 250 years for the Laschamps reversal to occur and the anomalies persisted for about 440 years before stabilizing again.

In the best-case scenario, Earth's magnetic field could retain about 25% of its current strength during the next magnetic reversal.