Ordinary Compasses Thrown Off By Changes In Earth's Magnetic Field

[Num7]

I posted a few weeks ago an article about issues at the Tampa Bay airport regarding runways needing to be re-designated, due to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. It seems they've been talking about this a lot recently and about a few others things that might well be related to the magnetic field shifting: Animal deaths ?!? Anyway, we're not going to talk about animals in this thread.

Let's talk a bit about the magnetic field and compasses.

The Earth's magnetic field is changing at an increasing rate, throwing off airports and altering the aurora borealis -- and its effect on ordinary compasses could mean the difference between homeward bound and hopelessly lost.

Earth’s northernmost magnetic point -- or magnetic north -- is distinct from its geographic North Pole, and scientists have long known that the magnetic poles are on the move.

As you may know, A compass relies on the magnetic pole to point you the north. Most of the time the magnetic North is usually not that far away from the actual geographical North, making it so that a compass, even cheapest ones are reliable enough. Sounds like you're gonna need a better compass soon, unless you calibrate yours!

Since compasses rely on magnetic north to point you in the right way up the trail, the average $2-dollar model could very well point you in the wrong direction. Depending on location and journey length, unaware hikers or boaters could find themselves hundreds of miles off course if they don’t calibrate for the shift, experts said.

As they say, magnetic poles movement happen sometimes slowly, sometimes faster. Like some people pretend, it seems the amount of movements right now are increasing.

Fluctuations in the magnetic field have occurred for hundreds of thousands of years, so the shifting pole doesn’t exactly worry scientists. Sometimes the movement is slow, sometimes fast. The rapidity of the change has to do with the amount of activity going on in the earth’s core.

You know what ? At least, we shouldn't worry about a pole shift!

“Reversals -- which is the changing of the polarity of the magnetic field -- that typically takes about 10,000 years to happen,” Love told FoxNews.com. And “10,000 years ago civilization did not exist. These processes are very slow and therefore, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

OK, I have no idea if this is going to affect your everyday life, except if you work as an air traffic controller in a place without electricity. Besides, it seems that most recent GPS are able to correct the North's position by themselves, which is pretty cool and useful.

Click here to read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011...-changes-earths-magnetic-field/#ixzz1F8wLY6VX