"Since its discovery the excitation of the Chandler wobble has been an intriguing problem that has stimulated research in various geophysical and geodetic fields.  Nevertheless, the actual mechanism in the Earth system that is most responsible for sustaining the Chandler wobble is still under investigation."¹ 

Any of THC's subscribers who have examined the most recent animated Polar Motion Plot will have undoubtedly noticed the abrupt change in the path of the North Pole during the last month or so (non-subscribers will have to wait until this article is released in June 2006 to see what is being referred to in this article).  Close examination of the track taken by the pole shows that during the months of November and December 2005 the pole seems to have come to an abrupt halt as if it "ran into something,"  and then turned left like it was "going around" that "something".  The first figure shows the last frame of the January 2006 subscriber's version of the animated graphic.  The end of the line that terminates in cyan represents the last six months of polar motion, with the extreme end representing the movement of the North Pole for December 1, 2005 thru January 1, 2006. 

Figure 1. Plot of three year's motion of the north rotational-axis  pole relative to the geodetic North Pole, which is designated by the center point of the axes of intersection.  The four axial directions represent the first 100 feet of the four respective longitude lines.

For those that are new to THC, and may not be completely familiar with our animated polar plots, or perhaps have not read "Understanding And Monitoring Polar Motion" what follows is a brief orientation.  The graphics in this article's figures represents a "bird's-eye" view of the Earth's north pole, or the point on the surface of the earth where all the northern longitude lines converge at the north pole.  However, in the interest of not cluttering up the diagram we have removed all but the four principle meridian lines, those going in the four cardinal directions. The traces, which start as grey lines, and end in bright cyan, are a path created by the daily plotting of where the Earth's spin axis intersects the Earth's surface relative to the north pole.  It is the apparent irregularity of this plot that is being discussed in this article.

As unusual as the current trace may appear, the pole's motion, also known as Chandler's wobble, has demonstrated some even more unusual motions in the last 32 years, since daily records of Earth's North-Pole position started being kept in 1973 by the International Earth Rotation Service.  Before 1973, records of the pole's position were determined about every 18 days primarily using celestial fixes to determine variations.  Actually, records of celestially-determined polar values have been kept since 1846, but the precision was relatively coarse, and before 1890 positions were only determined 10 times per year, or about every 36 days.  After 1973, and with the advent of high-precision satellite positioning systems, the Earth's pole position has been determined daily with a great deal of accuracy. 

And so, looking at just the last 33 years worth of positional data, we see several examples of "erratic-looking" motions of the Earth's rotational axis. 

During the next fourteen years (not shown graphically), between January 1983 and January 1998 the path of the pole went from a maximum through a minimum and back to a maximum.  During the latter part of 1987, when the path was going through its first minimum, the motion again became somewhat irregular, but significantly less than shown earlier. 

As was stated earlier, The International Earth Rotation Service has records of the pole’s position going back to 1846. Attempts to plot these data using only the 18 or 36 positional points per year created graphs that were extremely hard to interpret. The dearth of available points meant that the lines defining the pole's interpolated motion could look very jagged and hard to follow as it zigged and zagged in straight-line segments on the graph. To add to the problem, the older observations carried with them large error values due to the lack of precision in measurements available to the geometers at the time. To add the (sometimes considerable) error values to a conventional plot would mean rendering that plot even more incomprehensible.

To remedy that problem we devised a new type of animated plot, similar to the pre-1973 data, except that it shows each pole location's fix as an ellipse that is proportional to the error value associated with each data point. Like the pre-1973 data versions, we made the older data points fade to grey as they aged on the display. In this way one is able to track the motion of the pole over time, including each point’s error value, without being confused by earlier positional information.

Figure 6. A single frame from the pre-1973 polar motion animations showing the anomalous position of the Earth's rotational axis on June 14, 1902.

What we find as we look back to the record of Earth's polar motion before 1973 is that the relatively smooth spiraling motion, so typical of the last 30 years, seems to be the exception rather than the rule. The record of Earth's polar motion during the century from 1846 to 1946 shows polar motions that are much less circular, but which are much more angular and erratic. As is illustrated in figure 6, the record even shows that during early June 1902 the pole apparently took a brief excursion outside of its "average envelope" (defined by the points that came before and after it) by almost a full radius' distance. Assuming that the plotted data point represents accurate positional observation, it is clear that none of the anomalous motions that have occurred during the last 50 years even approach the 1902 level of erratic behavior.

It is interesting to note that examination of the period of time from 1933 to 1942 (and beyond) shows no obvious indication that the "catastrophes from outside forces" forecast in the following quote from reading 3976-10, created any discernable change in Earth's rotational behavior.

These {political changes in Italy} will not come, as we find, as broken, before the catastrophes of outside forces to the earth in '36, which will come from the shifting of the equilibrium of the earth itself in space, with those of the consequential effects upon the various portions of the country - or world - affected by same.

Sample of THC's "yellow alert" in the case of erratic motions in Earth's pole of rotation.

Another rule of thumb is that the average position of the trace of the wobble should not become overly linear, that is, if the normally arcing trace shows a pronounced "flattening" for more than 0.3 or 0.4 arcseconds (about 30 or 40 feet on the graph) in a particular direction, we will consider that sufficiently anomalous to issue our "yellow alert", shown here.    Meanwhile, subscribers can view our monthly updates of the track of the North Pole from the link found at the top of each bulletin.

How fast will the poles shift?

One primary indication we expect will quickly make evident that a pole shift is underway is a drastic change in the average annual position of the Chandler wobble.  Since the turn of the last century, the Earth's rotational axis has moved about 41 feet as is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Plotted yearly average position of Earth's axis for the years 1900-2005 relative to the Earth's geodetic axis. Each 0.100" represents a distance of about 10 feet.

It seems obvious that the kind of pole shift that THC envisions will cause a significant change in the fairly staid and stately drift that the pole has undergone for the last 105 years.  The pole shift that we envision will move the pole to a new position on the Earth approximately coinciding with latitude 89°N and longitude 58°W. That is, for reasons outlined in our articles entitled, "A Small Pole Shift Can Produce Most, If Not All, of The Earth Changes In Cayce's Readings", and "Calibrating The Hutton Commentaries' Model For a 1° Pole Shift to 89.0°N", the Earth's rotational north pole is slated to move about one degree of latitude south from its current position. 

The big question is "how fast is the pole going to move?"  Will the pole make the predicted one degree pole shift in a day? A week? A month? A year? How about a century?  The Creative Forces may know, but we don't have a clue. However, we can tell how long the pole would take to traverse the 60 to 70 miles it will have to move during a pole shift if it continued at its current rate.  Using a figure of exactly one degree for the distance the pole will move during the pole shift, and using its current drift rate of 41 feet per century, we find the trip would take almost 890,000 years!² 

Clearly, the poles are going to have to move substantially faster than that for anyone to call it a "pole shift". Perhaps reading 364-8 gives us an upper bound to the length of time it will take for the poles to shift:

(Q) Please explain what is meant by "He will walk and talk with men of every clime". Does this mean he will appear to many at once or appear to various peoples during a long period?

(A) As given, for a thousand years He will walk and talk with men of every clime. Then in groups, in masses, and then they shall reign of the first resurrection for a thousand years; for this will be when the [Earth] changes materially come.

Again, nobody knows whether the pole shift is going to take a day or an entire millennium, but even if the pole shift took a thousand years to complete, it would have to move almost 1000 times faster than it is right now.³  Therefore, however fast the pole ends up moving, when the poles really do start to shift, it will be so obvious that a pole shift is underway that there is no chance of anyone confusing the shifting with the present bumps and wiggles that are apparently so typical of Chandler's wobble.