Yes, Earth's magnetic poles can flip. But they probably won't anytime soon.

Earth is kind of overdue to see its magnetic field pull a 180 and reverse on itself. Certainly a lot of people are expecting this to happen any day now. But according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the magnetic field might be feeling a bit shaky, but it’s not going to flip-flop any time soon.

A team of European researchers compared the current state of Earth’s magnetic field with its tumultuous geological past, and found that the field’s current patterns of disturbance don’t resemble the same patterns that preceded previous pole reversals. Instead, the current field looks remarkably similar to situations 49,000 years and 46,000 years ago—when there was some considerable waning in strength, but no outright flip. Nevertheless, scientists are still left with a pretty unpredictable picture of what’s next for the magnetic field.

The magnetic field is essentially the reason why Earth is a nice and cozy home to life. Generated by the slow churning of the planet’s liquid core, it shields the world from cosmic radiation and nasty solar storms that would otherwise bludgeon us with charged particles from the sun. “If these charged particles ‘collide’ with the atmosphere, they can enhance loss of some atmospheric constituents, such as water,” explains Jon Mound, an associate professor of geophysics at the University of Leeds in the UK, who was not involved with the new study. In other words, if we didn’t have the magnetic field, Earth would probably look similar to a certain red wasteland located nearby, and it’s doubtful any of us would exist. Moreover, this shielding effect deflects charged solar wind particles from causing malfunctions in orbiting satellites important to GPS navigation, communications, meteorology, and surveillance, and electrical grids on the surface.