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We know of geomagnetic flip in Earth's history by studying geologic data. Given other planets in the system also possess a magnetic field leads to the assumption that such polarity reversal may not be unique to Earth.

Is it possible to determine geo-astrophysically whether such geomagnetic polarity reversal occurs on other planets?

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  • $\begingroup$ Just to be clear, are you interested in the other planets in our Solar system, or exoplanets? $\endgroup$
    – user10851
    Commented Dec 23, 2012 at 1:49
  • $\begingroup$ @ChrisWhite: No preference there. The mention of 'system' is based on the assumption that we may know more about our brother planets in the Solar System than exoplanets. $\endgroup$
    – Everyone
    Commented Dec 23, 2012 at 7:20

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Regarding rocky planets in our solar system:

Sure, you just have to go check out enough of the rocks on the surface.

Regarding exoplanets, and likely our own gas giants:

There are no methods by which we could determine such a thing with anything near today's technology. Maybe someday in the distant future we might be able to measure the magnetic field of the planet directly (with Zeeman Splitting or something), and might notice if we happened to observe a reversal... but that's incredibly unlikely.

Theoretically that information might somehow be encoded in the circumplanetary environment... e.g. maybe there would be some signature encoded into a debris-disk / ring system; but the prospect of that both happening and being observable is pretty out there.

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