B IF north pole becomes the south pole....

[DrStupid]

You'll have to explain how the Earth you refer to has no MI

Earth has MI.

or how much of the Earth's mass is involved in this flip.

The crust or the entire planet or something between. It doesn't matter.

Or even how you would describe the mapping between start and end of your process?

There are different possibilities. A rotation around an axis from 0°N 0°O to 0°N 180°O (similar to jbriggs444's suggestion) would result in

Longitude' = -Longitude
Latitude' = -Latitude

But it would be fair play to rotate the continental plates containing North and South America on an imaginary axis through Equador and wind up with North America in the southern hemisphere.

That is sufficient to describe the result of the process but not how it is achievable through a continuous deformation. The reality would be much more complex.

 

[sophiecentaur]

That is sufficient to describe the result of the process but not how it is achievable through a continuous deformation. The reality would be much more complex.

So we are taking bits of the crust and re-arranging them over the surface of the mantle? That's not really 'flipping' the Earth, is it? Hence my confusion. But it would still help if you could describe exactly what you originally meant (and whether you have changed your proposal, on the way through this thread).

 

[DrStupid]

So we are taking bits of the crust and re-arranging them over the surface of the mantle?

Or about re-arranging everything else too or something between. The OP is about flipping the entire Earth. Flipping the crust only is some kind of light version of this topic.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Have I just had a glimmer of the idea in the OP here?
You take a 'small' disc from the surface of the northern hemisphere. which is rotating anticlockwise (but around a polar axis and not a normal to the disc surface), viewed from over the N pole. You take a disc in the southern hemisphere at the same longitude and same latitude with different sign (which is rotating the same way) You then swap the discs (keeping their axes of rotation during the move) so that they exchange their positions. This would mean that the discs would end sticking up, out of the surface but they would still have their original angular momentum. You would then have to rotate them about a (locally) horizontal axis so that they lay right way up and flat against the surface.
That sort of transposition would start and end with the same angular momentum. To achieve this 'flip' could involve a temporary change of angular momentum of the discs during the move or it could involve the discs moving over the surface (Coriolis effect) as it moves out and over the equator.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Or about re-arranging everything else too or something between. The OP is about flipping the entire Earth. Flipping the crust only is some kind of light version of this topic.

OK. Have a fluid body and arrange for convection currents to swap the top and bottom halves, slowly. . . . . . .

 

[davenn]

Or about re-arranging everything else too or something between. The OP is about flipping the entire Earth. Flipping the crust only is some kind of light version of this topic.

can't really see that occurring, the rotation of the outer core, the mantle and crust are intimately tied together

if you seriously are proposing that possibility, I would like to see some links to professional papers
As far as I'm aware from my university studies, here is no evidence that it has occurred to the Earth in the past
unlike the stacks of evidence for a flipping magnetic fieldDave

 

[DrStupid]

if you seriously are proposing that possibility, I would like to see some links to professional papers

There is no reason to expect the existence of professional papers for every exotic hypothetical event. It doesn't violate the known laws of physics. Therefore it is possible.

here is no evidence that it has occurred to the Earth in the past

A single example is no basis for a reliable statistic. And if you extend it to all rocky planets of the solar system you need to consider that 25 % of them are at least partially flipped. I do not see how the possibility of a total flip could be excluded on the basis of such data.

 

[atom jana]

If we are talking about the magnetic poles, as far as I know, nothing would happen since both the poles are equally powerful, and they are virtually indistinguishable from each other. So, if the poles were interchanged, there would no effect on Earth.