Encyclopedia of geomagnetism and paleomagnetism / Энциклопедия геомагнетизма и палеомагнетизма

Geomagnetism is the study of the earth's magnetic field: its measurement, variation in time and space, origins, and its use in helping us to understand more about our Earth. Paleomagnetism is the study of the record left in the rocks; it has contributed much to our understanding of the geomagnetic field's past behavior and many other aspects of geology and earth history. Both have applications, pure and applied: in navigation, in the search for minerals and hydrocarbons, in dating rock sequences, and in unraveling past geologic movements such as plate motions. The entire subject is a small subdiscipline of earth science, and our goal has been to cover it in fine detail at a level accessible to anyone with a general scientific education. We envisage the encyclopedia to be of greatest use to those starting in the subject and those needing to know something of the field for their own application, but the topic is broad and demanding—as we have become increasingly aware while editing the huge variety of contributions—and we also expect it to be of use to experts in geomagnetism or paleomagnetism who need to stray outside their own area of expertise, for nobody is an expert in the whole field.<...>