Most celestial bodies suns and planets alike that have a majority of their compositions hot enough to be fluid in nature and with a percentage of iron have the potential to go through magnetic flips. The larger hotter and more fluid the celestial bodies components the faster the flip. The sun being the largest magnetic source in the solar system, having the strongest polarities being mostly fluids flips the fastest on its own energy every 22 years. Even with its immense size it flips very rapidly. This is because it is extremely volatile with virtually frictionless surfaces. These fluid systems can even flip at the molecular level so that the mass does not need to change its location. The sun can also produce magnetic vortexes geomagnetic excursions that facilitate this cycle.  This 22 year cycle helps keep the planets in a flat plane rotating around the sun. The magnetic poles are what keeps them on this flat plane. Everything including the Kuiper belt out 30 to 50 AU has these attractions. The Ort cloud being mostly durable non magnetically polarized materials rock comets, dust and gases are in a spherical ball around the sun without enough polarity at that distance and are influenced mostly by gravity being out up to 100 AU. The relatively small planet Pluto & Charon  has a much smaller magnetic force but has an irregular orbit that takes them into the Oort Cloud. There are millions of these planetoid rocks without normal planetary orbits in and out of the Oort Cloud. Now think about the Sun on one side of the earth out 1 AU with immense polarity and on the other side Jupiter about 4 AU with 40 time Earths Polarity and Saturn out 8 AU with 540 times Earths polarity. Earth is caught in the middle with its internal molten core and surface crust repelling each other and externally being magnetically repelled from both sides. Meaning that the north pole is in the same polarity orientation on the Sun Earth Jupiter and Saturn. Earth with a higher internal viscosity has a higher co efficiency of friction with its solid surface and flips more slowly and infrequently in comparison. This explains why in the past 10 million years, there have been, on average, 4 or 5 reversals per million years. In fact now it has been nearly 800,000 years since the last reversal and this is understandable because in past times the core has been hotter and more fluid and volatile and the surface solid layer has been thinner and more active through faster plate creations and many times the number of active volcanoes. Remember the earths crust receives its polarity from plate creations from the fluid core and volcanic eruptions that maintain the magnetic polarity of the core at the time they are formed. I know the earth has been more influenced and likely in the past to flip using magnetic vortexes but now that the cooler earth acts more like a solid and flips more on that basis. Since these forum pages are food for thought what if another possibility could be true. The relatively small volume crust of the earth receives magnetic influences from external sources like the sun and the other planetary bodies as well as from the earths internal core that could affect its polar flips. When all the planets are on essentially the same rotational plane and in line on the same side of the sun their polarities can effect each other. This rotational plane is maintained by the magnetic fields of these bodies. In other words the surface of our Earth is being repelled from both sides when all of their poles are in a parallel alignment as close as they can be on the same side of the sun. This alignment will occur again with all planets in a line on the same side of the sun on December 21, 2012. This is when the predominant portion of the crust has its north pole in line with the north pole of its fluid core and is in perfect alignment with the sun one one side and the planets on the other. At this time they are all in perfect alignment on the same side of the sun and then are repelling each other because many have their N & S poles are on the same side. In other words when the north pole of the sun and most of the planets are in line and parallel with the same polarity as the crust and inner core of the earth the repelling forces from both the outside and inside of the earth may cause the Earth's crust to rotate and change its polarity position by rotating. After this rotation the crusts magnetic forces are attracting and not repelling the core and are at rest with each other. The rotational gyroscopic action keeps the two components of the earth in line and is normally aided and stabilized by the magnetic poles on the moon. This helps to keep the earths crust in line. In other words the earths crust, with its 23 degrees of inclination to the core, is in parallel with the rotational axis of the moon. Below is an illustration of the planets their approx relative sizes and positions. The diameter of the earth could not be illustrated here because the Sun's diameter is about 109 times that of the Earth. So, you'd have to line up 109 Earth's to stretch across the face of the sun. In more exact terms the suns equatorial radius is 6.955 x 10⁵ km
or about 109 times the earths diameter of 6,371 km.

Saturn                                                                                  Jupiter                                               Mars Earth Venus Mercury Sun Sun                                                                          Of the first six planets all have their positive poles aligned with the suns. Remember that Jupiter has 40 times the magnetic field as the earth. Saturn has 540 times the magnetic field strength. Far away yes but these fields with their gravitational pull is what keeps them rotating around the sun.

Pluto                  Neptune                                        Uranus                                      Saturn         Jupiter     Inner 4 (includes us)

Here are the nine planets of the solar system The first six as shown above are on the right the last three with the most distance are on the left.