Slashdot Mirror
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.
"
Most, if not all, topographic maps have the difference between True north and magnetic north noted on them. This is so that people navigating by compass don't get lost. If the magnetic pole is moving that fast, then the maps are going to have to be updated much more frequently.
Best Slashdot Co
to conceive my children, I like doing it anywhere!
:D
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
I just wonder what makes people think that the pole is special enough so that they want to conceive their children there. I mean, would they think their fluids would be at their best, or the magnetism would only attract good genes?
Well, I had to be the one to say it... "Hell people, there isn't really that much to do up that far North but copulate!"
The honeymooners did not make the trip, but other couples, also believing that the location nurtures fertility, have chartered small planes to the forbidden spot, set up tents on the ice and conducted their business.
Its a wonder you don't find slummy hotels with free porno channels at the spot...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
So, if the north pole is shifting that far, that fast... will the Canadian children see any change in Santa's normal delivery schedule? I can only assume he'd be a little later than normal, seeing as how Siberia is quite a flight from Northern Canada.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Let's just hope that north pole doesn't head into any nuclear weapons testing zones up in Siberia... we could be looking at some pretty freaky looking babies!
...or airport painting crews will be staffing up:
Magnetic North Keeps Moving
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
I won't be able to write Santa Claus anymore at
Santa Claus ...?
North Pole
Canada, HOH0H0
Then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing. This past Giftmas my boyfriend wrote him asking for his list of naughty girls. Thankfully all he got back was a form letter. ;)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
This is just a natural movement of the pole, that's what it does.
Does anyone else remember from college how the poles just flip every million years or so, and no one really knows why? That whay *I* am worried about. the poles moving just a little bit is fine with me.
but if the poles just flipped, imagine what chaos it would cause. Would we have to relabel all the maps that are made? Many airplanes could not fly (with older instrumentation). Thankfully, GPS should still work..
Here's the main point of the article for those too lazy to click and read:
If the pole follows its present course, it will pass north of Alaska and arrive in Siberia in a half century, but Newitt cautioned that such predictions could prove wrong. "Although it has been moving north or northwest for a hundred years, it is not going to continue in that direction forever. Its speed has increased considerably during the past 25 years, and it could just as easily decrease a few years from now," the geophysicist said. The erratic pole can jump around considerably each day, but migrates on average about 10 kilometers to 40 kilometers each year.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Can we blame it ?
First the Canadian dollar heads south, then the north pole heads north.
Soon enough our beer will start tasting like that weak, watery American beer.
---
Copyright © 2002 me
...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.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
The Mag Pole is moving all the time. There is absoutely no way to predict for certain where it may go next.
..."
Apparently CNN takes pure speculation as predicting the future. It could just as easily end up in Atlanta, or (as has happened before in Earth's history) abruptly switch polarity and end up in Chile or the South Pole.
"... The honeymooners did not make the trip, but other couples, also believing that the location nurtures fertility, have chartered small planes to the forbidden spot, set up tents on the ice and conducted their business.
Umm, that's "forbidding", not "forbidden". Go there anytime ya want.
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.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
"Hello OnStar, how may I help you Mr. Jones?"
"I think I'm lost. I need to get downtown. Can you tell me where I am?"
"It says you are 10 miles out in the Pacific, Mr. Jones. Do you need assistance?"
You know what?
It has been drifting nothward for decades
This line just hits me as inherently funny, given the subject.
The slashdotted site became more slashdotted
CmdrTaco REALLY starting liking anime
ACs posted even stupider comments including the word stupider...
I KNOW, I KNOW...magnetic vs. true, etc. But its still funny
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
They even have an ISP up in Nunavut...in fact Wired had an article about net access up there in the permafrost.
- adam
How, exactly, can the North Pole drift northward?
Seems like it would be more accurate to say that Siberia is drifting northward and North America is drifting southward.
WE HAVE TO STOP THIS NOW! At this rate, North America will be South America, environmentalists will be warning about the dangers we face when the Jamaican ice sheets collapse, and Australia will be located somewhere near the moon.
Slashdot comments... splitting hairs since 1997.
So what, does this mean "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" is now just "Rudolph the Red"?
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Will this make it harder to see Northern Lights in Canada, and easier to see them in Siberia?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
...how people are going to be able to blame it on Bill Clinton.
God is real unless declared integer
Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Highway Construction
With the taxes on digital storage I would leave Canada too.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
You can fly commercial to Resolute, but it's dang expensive (several hundred dollars to even Yellowknife or Iqualuit). I actually want to go up there sometime just for the heck of it.
REDUCE FOSSIL FUEL USE TO SAVE THE NORTH POLE!
-jon
Remember Amalek.
many couples like to go to the magnetic North Pole to conceive their children.
Many couples are pretty stupid.
For what it's worth, most Wisconsinites I know associate the things you mention with Minnesotans.
For what it's worth.
Don't pay attention to what they say the reasons are. It's the taxes.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
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?
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Please don't tell NBC !!!
;)
Otherwise, they will convince god to give a magnetic north pole to both Russia and Canada.
(now, I can read the other posts to see how many people replied that
--
#include "coucou.h"
"Quite honestly, eh, we are unsure what dis is all aboot", says Dr. Ock E. Puck.
"I doon't know why, but it's moving pretty fast now, eh"
Canada's government is making swift efforts to entice the pole to stay. Currently in the works are:
Tax-breaks for Tesla-enducing corporations
Affordable shielding programs
and a bill to allow for the marriage of poles of the same orientation.
Every 250,000 years or so, the whole thing reverses polarity. And it's winding down right now, which is possibly a sign that we're due for another one. Don't invest too heavily in homing pigeons. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
many couples like to go to the magnetic North Pole to conceive their children
:)
?
It must give the offspring a magnetic personality
In a related story, the DoJ has uncovered corporate email from top executives in Microsoft indicating that the movement of the magnetic North Pole is part of a large-scale strategic initiative to corner the navigation software industry.
Bill Gates intends to migrate the Pole to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, at which point MS will claim corporate ownership of said pole.
Microsoft: We'll Tell Where to Go Today.
For a comparion of magnetic pole shift vs other theories of polar and crusty disturbance, check out this page which picks apart the psuedo science of it all. There are a lot of wacko theories on what pole shift means, and a lot of it is based on lack of evidence and mis-conceptions.
It is intereting to note that, the earth's core is rotating faster than the surface crust to begin with.
There is this concern: The magnetic field acts as a shield against solar particles, etc. No field = no shield. Weak field = weak shield. This could be an issue with solar flares. Some folks are concerned that the field may be in the process of failing
Also, if the poles were to flip suddenly, many creatures that navigate magnetically could be affected. A full magnetic reversal could cause massive ecological problems across the whole of the Earth. If this took place slowly enough, each generation of creatures would learn to navigate with its' current situation.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It is always going to be digital and calculated based on your position, but whether you want geographic north or magnetic north is up to you and the user typically can select which they want. The GPS receiver can be told where magnetic north is and calculates direction just the same as it would for true north.
I remember my Garmin knew that my magnetic deviation is 11W in central PA. Altho the $64,000 question is: Is there a way to update the position used as magnetic north in the GPS receiver so that it will be accurate in 10 years? Or for someone how knows better than I, does the GPS data stream include/can it include this information?
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
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Dear, take me to the pole!
Maybe he'll get over being a dual citizen like me after a few years. Since the North Pole will be in Alaska soon.
A warning though - the US is still the only country in the world not to use metric, all the dollars are the same color, and they don't use the u in words like colour or spell centre correctly.
On the plus side, he can cut back on all those bilingual training courses - but he might want to pick up some Spanish just in case.
And it might take longer to make Rudolph's nose red - the beer, cider, and wine down here is awful weak to Canadian tastes.
Wonder if he'll have any problems with the NAFTA and Free Trade forms - occupation: Santa - is that a professional skill?
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
A floating iron point would not be a digital compass. :)
As far as I know, GPS units calculate direction by triangulating the unit's position in relation to the 24 orbitting GPS space segment satellites. Each satellite transmits its own known position, the current atomic time, system status, etc., and also sends a pseudorandom navigation (PRN) stream.
The handheld receives a nav signal and PRN stream, and then generates its own PRN, using the current time as the seed. It then adjusts (looking for a pattern match) for the difference (thanks to the delay in transmission time) between the signal and the satellites PRN. This offset lets the GPS determine how far it is from a given satellite.
The handheld repeats this for another satellite, giving it two spheres that overlap, with the overlapping area being where the GPS must currently be. A third satellite is contacted, resulting in two possible points; one will be far, far "above" the satellite, so the GPS unit discards it. The remaining point is your current location. There *is* actually a fourth calculation (you can't determine 3 unknowns with only 3 variables, after all), which is a time-averaging based off the each of the satellites contacted, but many GPS units "fake" this by assuming that the unit is always at sea level.
That triangulation allows the GPS receiver to determine direction freely; the signals it receives give it enough axises of direction to do this, I believe. Anyone a bit more versed in geometry than me want to clear this up?
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
many couples like to go to the magnetic North Pole to conceive their children.
I've met some people who were conceived at the North Pole. None of them seemed to have any direction in life.
From the great generating facilities in our hydroelectric plants to the tiniest servo in children's toys, our fascination with electric power that has led to these global changes must end.
How can we in good conscience continue the use of these technologies, fully knowing their effect on our grandchildren?
Wow, must be either tough tourists or wimpy wolves up there!
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
One of his favorite examples was that people don't understand gravity, and they don't understand magnetism, so UFOs must be powered by gravity engines.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Join Greenpeace and save the Earth's fragile magnetic stability!!!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
What do they expect if they keep increasing taxes on magnetic media? The magnetic north pole is obviously going to want to move to somewhere cheaper, like Siberia.
So if the north pole moves over my backyard, can I sell tickets to people who want to visit it, or will it be public domain?
So when are geese gonna start flying North for the Winter?
--It's Pimptastic!--
Maybe it's tired of Canada's 4 seasons: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Highway Construction
;)
Ahhh city folk. We call Highway Construction (summer) Mosquito Season in the bush. After going through that, you can't wait for Almost Winter to start up again!
----- rL
First the doctors, then the nurses, then the software engineers, now the North Pole.
Looks like EVERYONE who can is leaving Canada.
Predictably, Jean Chretien denies that anything is wrong in any way whatsoever, and that more poles are MOVING to Canada than are leaving, resulting in a net pole gain.
Of course, the Canadian Post Office are probably relieved by this - in a few years letters addressed to "Santa Claus" will no longer go to Canada Post - they'll be Siberia's problem. The Union is overjoyed! Less work! But they'll still strike for more money, mind.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
does this mean we'll have a kewl place to congregate and put together some anti-dmca software, and make a few little hackers while we're at it?
Good God! I just realized -- we could lose the Santa Claus Toy Manufacturing plants as well!
The ignominy of it all.
No one taking the Magnetic Pole from us. We went up and buried a looney under it. Now we not only know where it is, we're guaranteed to win every hockey game we play up there.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Well, if the Earth's magnetic field were a perfect dipole then the north and south magnetic fields would be exactly opposite each other. Its not a perfect dipole (10% non-dipole ?), so they aren't exactly opposite each other. The shorter time-scale variations tend to be less dipolar. On longer time-scales, the poles do tend to stay pretty well attuned.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
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.
You're crazy. The obvious reason they're doing this is to move the lucrative "conceive at the magnetic north pole" market to Mother Russia!! It's quite obviously a communist plot.
You Hoser.
Regards,
Canada
Indeed, because 'almost winter' == 'hunting season'. :)
:)
That's the season where we show all these people that are saying "Who cares if the magnetic pole is moving? We have GPS!" how much a GPS is REALLY worth. Ever try getting a reading from a swamp?
- Jester
And, the notion that magnetic north doesn't need to be marked anymore because we don't need it for navigation is false even if it's true that we really don't need it for navigation anymore. Navigation isn't the only reason to bother keeping track of where magnetic north is. It's a scentifically interesting phenomenon to study, and it's real geographical information so why not put it on a map.
After all, I don't really need to know what the shape of Baffin Island in Northern Canada is, since I'll never be going there, yet there it is, marked on the map? Why? Because the purpose of a map is to show you the geography that's really there, not *just* the subset of it that you find useful. Marking where magnetic north is on a map might not be as useful anymore, but that doesn't mean it should be removed from the map. If the map only contained things I actually found useful, it would be a very vague map. It wouldn't bother telling me, for example, what the ocean depths are, since I'm not going down there.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
GPS units can tell you your position with great accuracy, but they don't tell you which way north (or any other direction) is. To do that, you need a compass.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Original article headline:
North Magnetic Pole could be leaving Canada
Slashdot article headline:
North Pole is leaving Canada
How would a culture that didn't have good medicine at the time even *know* that the radiation was causing problems? People must have been dying from undiagnosed health problems all the time anyway, even before the extra radiation.
All we can tell from the evidence really, is that humans survived the event, and that it didn't create a massive dip in population reproduction. That still leaves open the possiblity that people had shortened lifespans during that time (but lived long enough to procreate), and possibly had very painfully unhealthy conditions to contend with.
It takes a heck of a lot of radiation to cause total sterility. As long as that hasn't happened, the race can continue under conditions of extra solar radiation, but it won't be pleasant (and could lead to extra mutations, and thus the possible creation of more human races.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The real (axis or rotation) north pole is in no country. It's in international waters - or international "ices" to be more precise.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Republicans just don't do satire well.