not really sure what we could do with this--coffee house or Links would most likely be appropriate.
It would appear that at one time the earth had something in common with (Uranus?)--rotating on its side. And it seems that this might help explain the global ice age (for which there is some evidence for), or rather, how it could've happened.
I'm no geophysicist, so perhaps someone else could elucidate what the consequences of this are.
Any idea how massive such a hypothetical volcano would have to be? As in bigger than Everest? The earth is an oblate spheroid, and thus is distinctly flattened along the axis. I would think at most it would affect the precession angle of the earth (that is what imbalance on a top does).
There are also known magnetic anomalies, so it is possible that the data in question were affected by a local anomaly rather than a global shift.
But anyone knows the real reason is that this is evidence of a global flood totally rearranging the entire planet...
You keep refering to "that Ice Age" but what the article actually says is:
"Scientists have found no evidence for an ice age occurring 800 million years ago, and the change in the ocean at this juncture remains one of the great mysteries in the ancient history of our planet," Maloof said.
The earliest well-documented ice age, and probably the most severe of the last 1 billion years, occurred from 800 to 600 million years ago (the Cryogenian period) and it has been suggested that it produced a Snowball Earth in which permanent sea ice extended to or very near the equator. It has been suggested that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Cambrian Explosion, though this theory is recent and controversial.
The paper in question is speculative for the moment since, as RAZD pointed out earlier, the magnetic readings may be due to a local anomaly. Further testing in other geographic areas is necessary to gather more evidence for this hypothesis.