How our world could be turned upside down HOMO ERECTUS, our tool-making ancestor, never got around to inventing the compass. But if she had, she would have noticed something odd happening to the Earth's poles 780,000 years ago. Slowly but surely, the world was turning on its head. The north magnetic pole, for our tool-making African ancestors, was bang in the middle of Antarctica. A modern compass would have shown the northernmost point of the continent as the Cape of Good Hope while far to the south lay the Mediterranean and Europe. But over the centuries the poles began to move. A compass needle on the prehistoric Earth would have begun to swing erratically from point to point until, after a few thousand years, it settled on a new direction. The new North Pole was now at the bottom of the ancient world, in the centre of the ice cap we call the Arctic. Full article at connected.telegraph.co.uk
 home
|
 | | I don't think so I was always taught that magnets pointed to a large ore deposit in northern Canada which is why we have the difference between magnetic north and true north. So unless that ore deposit began to move around the compass needle would have remained steady.
I think these people need to get there facts right before they try and tell us the worlds about to turn upside down. | |
|  | | |  Magnetic North is NOT fixed
Magnetic North is NOT fixed, as you presume, and the article "has the facts straight" as you say.
FD. | |
| | | | | Re: Magnetic North is NOT fixed Then are you saying that a compass doesn't point to a large ore deposit in northern Canada or are you saying that the ore deposit is moving around.
I'm not trying to argue that the earth doesn't have a magnetic field. I'm just saying that magnets point to several tons of iron ore and regardless of what the earths magnetic field is doing a big chunk of Canada is not going to start drifting around the planet. | |
| | | | | | Re: Magnetic North is NOT fixed Suggest you look at the following links, which show Magnetic North moves around, and they interchange.
FD
From Canadian Geological Survey:
»www.geolab.nrcan.gc.ca/geomag/e_nmpole.html
"Subsequent observations by Canadian government scientists in 1962, 1973, 1984, and most recently in 1994, showed that the general northwesterly motion of the pole is continuing, and that during this century it has moved on average 10 km per year".
»www.tgo.uit.no/articl/roadto.html
"Where has the pole been and where is it going? If we use all the observations from the 1500s until today and employ Gauss’ model, we obtain the map shown here. The pole has enjoyed a sortie into Canada and is now on its way out into the Arctic Ocean again. Geologists find traces of the magnetic field in many minerals (pæleogeomagnetism) and can tell us how the pole has wandered round in the polar region for millions of years, a wandering it will surely continue. Sometimes, however, something quite remarkable occurs. In fact, the current north pole is a south pole in magnetic parlance, this having historical reasons. This has not always been the case, however, and now and again the two poles change place! During the course of the last 5 million years this has happened around 25 times. Approximately 720,000 years have passed sine the poles last changed around and the phenomenon will certainly repeat itself, we just don’t know when. The dynamo in the Earth’s interior is unstable such that on occasion the field weakens, loses its bipolar character and regenerates with reversed polarity. It is believed that the reversal process takes several thousand years, but some modern opinions suggest a shorter time. We can only imagine the confusion when the compasses of the world suddenly turn a half circle!" | |
|
| |
|
|
