North Pole is Leaving Canada

Dedekind writes: "CNN.com is posting this story on the drifting of the Magnetic North Pole. Not only is the pole shifting from a spot just North of Resolute, Canada, Canadian scientists expect it to end up in Siberia within the next half-century. Perhaps the most interesting part of the story (which really is only a small part at the end) is that many couples like to go to the magnetic North Pole to conceive their children. "

Comments

Hopefully it slows......

[Ryan_Terry]

...or airport painting crews will be staffing up:

Magnetic North Keeps Moving

Take a reasonably uninteresting story...

[fruey]

...post comments about the conception part, and watch 50% or more of posts go on about their kids being conceived there, shagging in ice and all that.

The CNN article, apart from giving fodder to go on about Arctic Sex, is uninteresting. Nothing scientific about it, just pure, watered down, stretched out simple fact.

You could write it like this:
The North Pole is moving. People might go and look at it. Some even conceive there.

That's it.

For some values of "many"

[maggard]

...many couples like to go to the magnetic North Pole to conceive their children

Many?

What - 5, 6? Perhaps a dozen a season? On a planet of 6 billion folks that's "many"? That isn't even a lot compared to any other notable location: How many kids have been conceived within a few km of Niagara Falls by honeymooners? Or what about all of the Asian folks intentionally born in supposedly "lucky" years?

By the way, for only having 200 fulltime inhabitants tourism is a major industry in Resolute Bay with 4 hotels, several charter airline services and a number of tour operators. That the occasional couple decides gave a go at it near the magnetic pole is hardly surprising nor are the numbers unexpected.

Re:that's not bad

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

but if the poles just flipped, imagine what chaos it would cause

The orientation of the field doesn't really matter too much. I mean, we'd have to relabel compasses, etc., but no big deal.

But ... during the reversal, the magnetic field actually fades to (essentially) zero, and does so for a noticeable length of time. In that circumstance, the Van Allen Belts disappear and the surface no longer has its usual protection from solar wind, cosmic rays, etc. That's the time to worry.

Shifting poles = mutations

[Mad Quacker]

From what I've read, every time the poles have shifted there has been a great period of mutation/evolution, since the magnetic shield that protects us from solar radiation is weakend or dissappears completely until the pole settles into its new position. I think the next one or two generations will find out for sure :)

I don't have an sources to link to of the top of my head, anyone else?

Re:North = South = North

[ZaneMcAuley]

So, if the magnetic poles do swap. Would that mean all aeroplanes fly upside down due to the software bugs :D There was a story about that one in a Figher plane that crossed the Equator and got confused and rolled over upsidedown :D

Isn't it the magnetic south pole?

[Florian Weimer]

The compass needle points with its north pole end to the geographic north pole. IIRC, you call this end of the needle its "north pole" and mark it with an "N". Therefore, the magnetic pole in the northern hemisphere has to be a south pole, magnetically speaking.

Re:Isn't it the magnetic south pole?

[DunbarTheInept]

Actually, the compass is just deliberately mislabelled, I think. It's "N" doesn't mean "this is this the needle's north end", but "this arrow is pointing to the earth's north pole" It's the compass that's labelled backwad. It's easy enough to test - get a magnet labelled as N and S, and hold it up to the compass and see how it gets affected.

Re:Effect on topo maps

[GoRK]

It should also be noted that the gps signal is fairly weak, and wouldn't be hard to interfere with.

This is a problem which has been all but solved. The military has developed vehicle-mounted gps recievers that can deal with inconceivable amounts of jamming (something about using multiple recievers to filter out the jamming signal - im not a radio expert), then relay the signal over some un-jammed frequency (software-based radio maybe?) to provide highly accurate positioning to weapons and personnel in the field who are unable to recieve the "native" gps signal.

Couple this with the military's ability to selectively introduce faulty data into the GPS signal (and remove it on the ground) and you have a pretty good system for getting you within 10 feet of where you want to go and disorienting your enemy besides.

And in response to the grandparent of this post, good luck hitting any LEO satellite with a missle. That's like trying to shoot a fly at 5000 yards with a .44. Talk about a feat! A more effective anti-satellite weapon would probably be a railgun (a real railgun) capable of hurling millions of particles of dust sized shrapnel at insane speeds in the general vacinity of the target satellite -- if they'd ever finish the development of the weapon..

All that fancy navigational equipment I have in my airplane doesn't come close to approaching the compass/stopwatch/map for reliability.

Ah yes but it certainly does for accuracy and detail!