The resulting initial field strength is consistent with the present geomagnetic data and a 6,000-year age for the field. Thus we have a plausible explanation for how the current in the core got started. In 1986, I suggested that there was a powerful release of energy in the earth's core at the beginning of the Genesis flood, and that the resulting strong movements in the core field produced rapid reversals of the earth's magnetic field, about one per week, during the year that the flood was laying down the fossil layers at the earth's surface. General physical laws allow rapid reversals, a likely physical mechanism exists to cause the reversals, and observations of the sun's magnetic field demonstrate reversal cycles in nature today. The disturbances in the core fluid during the flood would disrupt the electric current, chopping much of it up into small swirls oriented in different directions.
Paleomagnetic data confirm the existence of such components in the field in the past.
Standard electromagnetic theory predicts that, after the flood, the higher-order components would die away faster than the dipole part. Because the higher-order components can have either polarity, the strength of the field would fluctuate up and down, as different components died away at different rates. Since the dates conventionally assigned to the data points are based on radiocarbon dating, I have plotted the data on a time scale crudely corrected for changes in the percentage of carbon 14 in the atmosphere since the flood. The curve shown is a statistical fit using just the three simplest of dozens of possible components. Around 500 A.D., the last remaining higher-order component became small compared to the main dipole component, and the field decayed smoothly after that.