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North Pole Heads South
blamanj writes "Things are not looking good for Santa. First, news that it's getting warmer at the North Pole, and now, scientists report that the (magnetic) pole itself is on the move. 'Earth's north magnetic pole is drifting from North America at such a clip that it could end up in Siberia in the next 50 years.'"
Is it true that we are overdue for a reversal in the polarity of the Earths magnetic field? Would this be a Bad Thing for us humans if it happened soon?
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Is this a part of the cycle of the reversal of Earth's magnetic field? I always though that this cycle took much much longer ( but 1/3 of the way down in under 50 years?).
Quick, call G.W. Bush that the russians are stealing the pole to hide weapons of mass destruction in siberia !
We haven't found them in Iraq, so they MUST be some else.
i don't think it's news that the north pole is getting warmer, but the actual magnetic pole moving?
well now that i read about it the poles moving seems pretty normal.
"They found that the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last thousand years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia, but it sometimes moved in other directions, too."
Santa doesn't live at the magnetic North Pole, silly.
The magnetic poles have been moving for what, millions of years, and science has known about this for many years now. Magnetic history found in rock has shown the poles have actually completely switched places several times in the past.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
When I went to school I was taught that the magnetic poles swap places once every 23,000 years, so I guess the NP (or should it be SP - who knows?) is just getting ready to leave.
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Does this mean the South Pole will shift to Chile or Argentina as well?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
... is it called pole-vaulting?
But this site sure has them and this site has some too.
Read them. They are worth it.
It looks like there are two magnetic norths on the planet. Our current one looks like it is just the additive of the major and minor magnetic fields of the earth with their collective strengths oscillating over time... hence the apparent movement.
The magnetic North Pole has never been a single point.
It has always been a general area, and at any given point of time, the *actual* North Pole would be somewhere in that area.
So, given that, this is not really surprising.
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Unless of course they mislabeled your compass. What if it's the compass that is backwards. Damn that means a conspiracy going back thousands of years.
It's well known that compasses are actually labeled backwards.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
No... flush rotation has nothing to do with the magnetic field. It is related to the coriolis effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force) though it seems that the field of physics now implies that the coriolis force is too weak to manifestly impact fast moving water going down the tube. The velocity is a result of conservation of angular momentum. Flow direction (influenced by coriolis) is more impacted by the shape of the container.
The geographic north pole is north by definition, the magnetic north pole is not - so it can head south.
James P. Barrett
I never understood conservatives' problems with environmental issues. Things like global warming, the eventual depletion of fossil fuels, deforestation ... why is it stupid to consider this issues like this? I mean we live on this planet, don't you think we should look out for it? We're not going to get another shot at this. Once we fuck it up, we're extinct.
Politicians have a good reason to be anti-environment because they and their friends make serious bank by drilling oil, cutting down trees, running industries that pollute and the like. I can understand their point of view. But why does their profit mean anything to you? You realize that by supporting their point of view, you're just making them rich at the expense of the planet's (finite) resources, right?
now i'm going to have to relabel all my magnets.
Gamma rays are photons - i.e. light. They are not affected by the weak magnetif field surrounding the earth. Loss of the magnetic field would be devestating long term because it would make it easier for solar winds to slowly strip away the upper atmosphere.
But... a weakened field for a few decades will not send us all to early graves. The biggest impact of a changing magnetic field would be to:
- Navigation. I guess we all have to adjust to GPS and similar.
- Animal navigation. Sadly birds, fish, etc. haven't yet implemented and learned how to use GPS. They'll have loads of trouble.
In terms of dangers it poses to us in the next hundred or so years, should this be a continuation of the existing decrease/beginning of reversal in field strength, it's importance is way below things like climate change, oil reserves running out, etc.
Nuisance for us, a bitch for animals that rely on it to migrate, but as a race, the danger from it is effectively zero.
North Pole Heads South
Well, it didn't have much choice, did it? The north pole is the only place on earth where no matter where you're going, you're going south. So what's all the fuss about?
(of course the fact that it is actually moving is quite a story)
Well, there's two ways of looking at it: either the Earth's magnetic poles are labelled wrongly, or EVERY OTHER MAGNET IN ALL HISTORY is labelled wrongly. Take your pick.
Compasses aren't labelled incorrectly. The North side of a bar magnet in a compass is labelled North because that is the way it points, not for its magnetic pole. They aren't saying, "Hey, this is the North pole of this magnet," they are saying "Hey, this side of the magnet always points North." Those are two completely different meanings.
In MY day, the rich used the stars to navigate. My family couldn't afford them, so we used moss.
And we were GRATEFUL.
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Actually, since the North Pole is the northernmost point there is, no matter what direction it moves in, it's going south. So it was inevitable.
The North pole is NOT defined by magnatic north, but by the axis of rotation of the earth. The magnatic north and the true north pole do not lie on the same place. That's no news.
Have you read the NASA article that you linked? It says nothing about mass extinction events and polarity reversals in earth's history, it appears to be talking about mars. Now if you look at this link http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience .html you would see that field does not coincide with mass extinctions. Furthermore when the last one happened paleontologists said there were no major changes in plant an animal life. So your mass extinction seems like a leap of imagination.
It all comes down to individual costs vs. group costs. The Left is more concerned with long-term group costs - not to say that they're not concerned with individual costs, but they're more willing to pony up for stuff that makes long-term sense. Conservatives, for the most part AFAICT, can't be bothered with worrying about the group costs.
I'm not going to say that not worrying about group costs automatically makes you greedy and evil, although the Left would love everyone to think that (and I would too, insofar as it might get the system changed before we're all choking to death.)
But I DO claim that being concerned about individual costs more than group costs makes sense from an evolutionary perspective - the individual mind must be more concerned with its own survival rather than everyone else's too. One lone organism can persist to reproduce, etc even if all its clan are killed off. Clearly, this kind of mentality had to evolve prior to group selection.
However, it's been said repeatedly that the history of modern morality and cultural evolution describes an expanding circle, in which more and more people are encompassed within the region of "people we need to care about and grant rights to." In modern times this has surpassed individual humans and expanded to include the whole environment.
So conservatives aren't wrong, they're just not caught up with the rest of the world.
Now, is it going to make sense when those on the Left who are crazies (don't deny it, every side has got 'em) - when they start targeting oil executives (why aren't those pansies doing that shit yet anyway!), is that going to change how people think? Probably not - but it sure would make those revolutionaries feel better. Not that I'm advocating that - it would be better if they'd just realize the error of their ways and start giving a shit about other people. That'd make all that x-tian rhetoric all the more realistic...
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