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Satellite Swarm Spots North Pole Drift
An anonymous reader writes "A report from the European Space Agency shows the first collection of high-resolution results from the agency's three-satellite Swarm. The report illustrates the latest changes in the Earth's magnetic field and shows the movement of the magnetic North Pole. "Launched in November 2013, ESA's Swarm mission consists of three 9-meter satellites orbiting the planet at altitudes of 300-530 km (186-330 miles). Their goal is to monitor Earth's dynamic magnetic field, observing its changes over a period of four years. The data gathered by the Swarm satellites will help scientists better understand how our magnetic field works, how it's influenced by solar activity, and why large parts of it are found to be weakening.""
this will bring out the global warming deniers.
bad headline, the drifting of the North Pole is seperate matter from drift of magnetic pole. The magnetic pole is moving north at 40 km / year (accelerating from its former value of 10 km/ year a century ago. Normal and expected too.
The north pole itself moves a few cm per year
What's your opinion?
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Since when are three objects considered a swarm? If that's acceptable it should be appended to the list.
Knowledge Brings Fear
This is important work, which compliments terrestial geomagnetic measurements and space based observations.
The earth's magnetic field results from a planetary dynamo. Magnetic field lines get frozen into the electrically conductive fluid core. Then, differential motions in the fluid causes the magnetic field to get twisted up -- it's no longer is the simple dipole (like those bar magnets that you played with as a kid). Instead, the earth's magnetic field develops high order moments (sorta like bumps and dips). These shapes evolve as the conductive core moves. Eventually, the magnetic field gets so tangled up, that it unravels. At that time, the earth's field reverses. These magnetic field reversals show up in the geologic record ... every 10,000 to 100,000 years, there's a flipover.
Measurements like the ESA Swarm satellite give us a handle on the evoloution of the Earth's magnetic field, as well as showing how that field interacts with the magnetic and particle environment of the solar wind.
(disclaimer - most of what I just posted is from a terrific graduate class that I took at the Lunar & Planetary Labs way back in 1979, and when I worked with Charles Sonett, who studied the solar wind. Likely, much of this is way out of date!)
is fucking everything up. The Republicans won't be happy until everything is ruined because of their actions.
So that's where Karl Rove was last weekend - he was up at the North Pole shoving the magnetic field around!
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Republicans were on Mars?
Political joke = butthurt, apparently.
Tough crowd.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's a proper name, not the noun or an acronym. At least, that's what I could gather. Usually a mission is named via acronym (Synchronous Wideband Analysis for Research of Magnetism, or some such), or occasionally after a famous administrator (James Webb Space Telescope, named after the 2nd NASA Administrator) or the (rarely) a famous principal scientist. This seems to be none of those, or at least I couldn't find a reference on the ESA pages. Damned Europeans. They're mocking us with their "no rules" satellite naming conventions.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Now they will have to rename the airport runways again!
The figure in the link seems to have the wrong caption, its shows not the changes in the field but the total field itself. (20000-60000 nT) During the video you can see the version with the changes +/- 3000 nT, which interestingly shows the greatest drop along the west side of the Americas, and a small rise in the Indian Ocean.
Rift opens in twelve.
Hope you are ready for the Event
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well.... if you consider that Viking 1 and Viking 2 landed during Gerald Ford's term in office....
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
the last one in Poland please turn the lights off.
There is more than one North Pole. For one, there is North Pole, Alaska (which isn't even above the Arctic Circle!). More seriously, we have the magnetic north pole, where the compasses point to, and then the point where the Earth's rotational axis meets the Earth's surface. It's not quite accurate to say that the rotational axis moves relative to the Earth's surface, although the planet does wobble on its axis. However, we usually express that in terms of which point on the celestial sphere the Earth appears to rotate around, which changes every few thousand years. The point of which that rotation (known as the precession of the equinoxes) appears to rotate around is the ecliptic north pole, which can also be expressed as the point directly perpendicular to the plane of Earth's rotation around the Sun.
Out of all of them, North Pole, AK, is the worst. The others are harder to visit though.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
damn that global warming! we have to do something!
The core of the earth is a molten core of iron. Iron is magnetic. As it moves around, the magnetic field around it will change. The magnetic north has been moving long before humans walked the earth and probably will be moving around long after we leave. As with NOAA faking the "man made" global warming data, this will just be another way to scare the morons that don't think into believing global warming is caused by man.
The magnetic poles are moving at an unprecedented rate of 40 km/yr and is the fastest recorded movement. At the rate of current increase, compasses will soon point to somewhere in Siberia in the not to near future.
That got told right where to stick it you fucking punk midget whimp http://linux.slashdot.org/comm...
Two's company, there's a swarm?
Why in the hell would they do that?
Sorry, my sarcasm Meter has failed me! I read it as this moron actually thinks "global warming" is causing the magnetic pole drift. I really hope this is sarcasm; it cannot have gotten this bad; could it?