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Title: Do mantle heat-flux changes cause superchrons and reversal-rate swings?
Plain: The rate of pole flips has changed slowly over hundreds of millions of years, perhaps because the overlying rocky mantle changes how fast heat leaves the core. Whether that explains long flip-free periods is untested.
Precise: Test whether time variations of the total core-mantle boundary heat flow $Q_{\mathrm{cmb}}$ and its lateral pattern over 1e8 yr, taken from mantle-convection reconstructions, quantitatively reproduce the observed reversal-rate history including the Cretaceous Normal Superchron. An answer is either dynamo simulations driven by reconstructed CMB heat-flux histories that match the reversal-rate record, or a demonstration that rate swings of this size arise intrinsically at fixed boundary conditions.
Settled by: Dynamo runs forced by plate-reconstruction-based CMB heat-flux histories compared statistically with the 0 to 200 Ma reversal record.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: yes-no
References: (empty)
Literature status: open
Status note: (empty)
Posed since: (empty)