Did the two Earth poles move widely 13,000 years ago? An astrodynamical study of the Earth’s rotation

General Scientific Direction ONERA, BP 72, 92322 Chantillon cedex, France The last ice age was maximum circa 19,000 BC and its map shows a beautiful symmetry about a “pole” in the present Baffin Sea. The astrodynamical study of the Earth’s rotation leads to the concept of a “stable equilibrium position of the poles”. The estimation of the Earth inertia matrix during the last ice age is not yet accurate enough to confirm the past position of the pole near the Baffin Sea, but it shows that indeed the pole could have moved that far in a few millennia. This estimation also shows that the Earth polar moment of inertia had increased very slightly during the melting of the last ice age, with a corresponding huge release of energy. This release, with the 120-meter rise of sea level and the upheaval of climate, has contributed to make that age an age of natural disasters.