{"id":118,"date":"2018-12-28T17:06:34","date_gmt":"2018-12-28T22:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/?p=118"},"modified":"2025-02-28T18:49:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T23:49:24","slug":"earth-as-magnet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2018\/12\/28\/earth-as-magnet\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth as Magnet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This was one of my more satisfying essays. Several years ago I gave some thought to what it meant for the earth to be considered a magnet. More recently in 2012 an article in the magazine BirdWatching<\/em> brought it all back when I saw its diagram of the earth as a magnet for guiding migratory birds. Knowing that magnets have north and south poles, where should we expect to find the earth\u2019s north and south magnetic poles? See Earth as Magnet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update (2\/28\/2025)\u00a0 Even Experts Slip Up<\/strong>
<\/p>\n

\"\"In an otherwise engaging post<\/a> with video<\/a> on the possibility of the earth\u2019s magnetic field flipping and what the consequences would be, Sabine Hossenfelder showed images of the earth and its magnetic field lines of force with a north-south magnet superimposed.\u00a0 Alas it showed the north magnetic pole erroneously oriented toward the north geographic pole.\u00a0 I suspect, however, that she may have done this on purpose so as not to distract the uninitiated.<\/p>\n

I skimmed some of the comments to her video and it was not until the 38th<\/sup> comment that someone noticed the error:<\/p>\n

@mdjurfeldt \u00a0<\/h3>\n

The animation showing a magnet inside Earth which flips is backwards. We actually currently have the magnetic southpole in the north. So, if the field flips, the magnetic northpole will move \u201chome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Before Flip (3:16)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After Flip (3:19)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was one of my more satisfying essays. Several years ago I gave some thought to what it meant for the earth to be considered a magnet. More recently in 2012 an article in the magazine BirdWatching brought it all back when I saw its diagram of the earth as a magnet for guiding migratory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14,31],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-curiosities-and-questions","tag-physics","tag-vectors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4297,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions\/4297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}