The question is rather simple. The earth has been bombarded by meteorites since the very beginning. There have been suggestions that meteorite impacts may have led to mass extinctions. Even dinosaurs extinction has been attributed by some to the combined result of meteorite impact and volcanic eruptions (for example the extensive eruption of Deccan volcanism in a few million years at the Cretaceous-Paleocene boundary). I wonder if big meteorite can cause flipping of the Earth's magnetic poles, and if they can, what related consequences can be expected?
A magnetic effect of meteorites has been suggested for the moon, but it is not strong enough.
https://physicsworld.com/a/meteorite-impacts-did-not-magnetize-the-moons-crust-new-simulations-reveal/
Article Was the moon magnetized by impact plasmas?
Also interesting:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/uoc--emn030520.php
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/5/2309
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-researchers-track-slowly-splitting-dent-in-earth-s-magnetic-field
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/ggph-tsa042618.php
https://futurism.com/earth-magnetic-field-buried-fragment-ancient-planet
Regards,
Joachim
The Earth's magnetic field is generated in its molten iron and nickel outer core, so an impactor would have to penetrate extremely deeply - about 3000 km below the surface - to materially alter the field. Probably no impactor since the putative Theia collision 4.5 billion years ago, or at least the Late Heavy Bombardment which ended 3.8 billion years ago, has been massive enough to do so.
The "dinosaur-killer" impact at Chicxulub penetrated no more than 30 kilometers into the crust, so it would not have altered the global magnetic field. In fact, we know that it did not - the next magnetic field flip occurred 300,000 years after the impact, which is the normal timescale for flips. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39361007
Planetary magnetism is caused by the (mechanical) alignment of free-floating atoms in relatively calm fluids on/near the planet's surface. A large upheaval in this fluid (caused by any natural phenomenon) may cause a reversal of the planet's magnetic polarities or changes in its magnitude. See: http://www.vixra.org/abs/1102.0038
Nainan.
Earth's magnetic field seem to flip naturally without the need for any external force
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal
I guess in the early period of Earth 3.8 Ba and before this could be the case. However, no impactor has been so massive in the recent times to do so.