Felix the Cat
12-16-2005, 05:17 PM
Earth's north magnetic pole moving to Siberia at rapid rate (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20051209/ca_pr_on_sc/earth_magnetic_pole_3)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Earth's north magnetic pole is rapidly drifting away from Canada and toward Siberia, scientists said Thursday.
Despite accelerated movement over the last century, the possibility Earth's modestly fading magnetic field will collapse is remote. The magnetic poles are part of the magnetic field generated by liquid iron in Earth's core and are different from the geographic poles, the surface points marking the axis of the planet's rotation.
Scientists have long known magnetic poles migrate and in rare cases, swap places. Exactly why this happens is a mystery.
"This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada," Joseph Stoner, a paleomagnetist at Oregon State University, said Thursday at an American Geophysical Union meeting.
Previous studies have shown the strength of the Earth's magnetic shield has decreased by 10 per cent over the last 150 years. During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 1,100 kilometres out into the Arctic, said a new analysis by Stoner.
The rate of the magnetic pole's movement has increased in the last century compared with fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries, the Oregon researchers said.
At the current rate, the north magnetic pole could swing out of northern Canada into Siberia.
The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831 and when it was revisited in 1904, explorers found the pole had moved 50 kilometres.
For centuries, navigators using compasses had to learn to deal with the difference between magnetic and geographic north. A compass needle points to the north magnetic pole, not the geographic North Pole. For example, a compass reading of north in Oregon is about 17 degrees east of geographic north.
In the study, Stoner examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes. Since the sediments record the Earth's magnetic field at the time, scientists used carbon dating to track changes in the magnetic field.
They found the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last 1,000 years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia but it sometimes moved in other directions, too.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Earth's north magnetic pole is rapidly drifting away from Canada and toward Siberia, scientists said Thursday.
Despite accelerated movement over the last century, the possibility Earth's modestly fading magnetic field will collapse is remote. The magnetic poles are part of the magnetic field generated by liquid iron in Earth's core and are different from the geographic poles, the surface points marking the axis of the planet's rotation.
Scientists have long known magnetic poles migrate and in rare cases, swap places. Exactly why this happens is a mystery.
"This may be part of a normal oscillation and it will eventually migrate back toward Canada," Joseph Stoner, a paleomagnetist at Oregon State University, said Thursday at an American Geophysical Union meeting.
Previous studies have shown the strength of the Earth's magnetic shield has decreased by 10 per cent over the last 150 years. During the same period, the north magnetic pole wandered about 1,100 kilometres out into the Arctic, said a new analysis by Stoner.
The rate of the magnetic pole's movement has increased in the last century compared with fairly steady movement in the previous four centuries, the Oregon researchers said.
At the current rate, the north magnetic pole could swing out of northern Canada into Siberia.
The north magnetic pole was first discovered in 1831 and when it was revisited in 1904, explorers found the pole had moved 50 kilometres.
For centuries, navigators using compasses had to learn to deal with the difference between magnetic and geographic north. A compass needle points to the north magnetic pole, not the geographic North Pole. For example, a compass reading of north in Oregon is about 17 degrees east of geographic north.
In the study, Stoner examined the sediment record from several Arctic lakes. Since the sediments record the Earth's magnetic field at the time, scientists used carbon dating to track changes in the magnetic field.
They found the north magnetic field shifted significantly in the last 1,000 years. It generally migrated between northern Canada and Siberia but it sometimes moved in other directions, too.