Canadians outsourcing the North Magnetic Pole......

[whistle]

<snip>
EdmontonJournal.com

Our North loses the Pole After centuries in Canada, the roaming magnetic North Pole has crossed into international waters, en route to Siberia

Nathan VanderKlippe
CanWest News Service


Thursday, June 09, 2005

YELLOWKNIFE, N.W.T. - Sometime in the last year, a longtime friend turned its back on Canada and was last spotted heading for Siberia.

For centuries, the magnetic North Pole was ours, a constant companion that wandered the rolling tundra and frozen seas of our Arctic.

But no more.

A Canadian scientist who recently returned from a trip to measure the Pole's current location says it has now left Canadian territory and crossed into international waters.

"I think the Pole has probably just moved past the 200-nautical-mile limit," said Larry Newitt, head of the Natural Resources Canada geomagnetic laboratory in Ottawa. "It's probably outside of Canada, technically. But we're still the closest country to it."

In May, Newitt and his instruments landed on a patch of frozen ocean at 82.5 degrees North to make a more precise measurement of the magnetic Pole's position.

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<link> http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=658628d5-fc19-48e0-add8-bc0fbebadfe9

[Maple]

1. Wonder how long it will take

for the pole to make it's circuit, and come back.

[sakabatou]

2. About 26,000 years

[Maple]

5. Hmmm thought it would be

longer than that.

[sakabatou]

6. Well it is an estimate based on ice core samples

and computer models.

[hecate77]

8. It probably won't. We seem to be heading for a flip

It is unlikely that the pole is shifting in a repeatable pattern. A respondant below mentions a 26,000 year cycle, but that is related to the wobble of the earth's axis and where the rotational axis points in the sky, and is not related to the flip of the magnetic poles of the earth. This flip is a relatively regular phenomenon, as witnessed by the bands of material deposited along the mid-Atlantic rift. This material freezes out of the magma as it comes to the surface and takes on the a magnetic orientation that reflects the magnetic field direction of the earth at the time that it solidifies. This area is a series of bands, alternating north and south, showing that, over time, the poles have flipped on a fairly regular basis.

Where the pole might wander as it weakens is purely random. It might go to Siberia one time, it might go to Alaska another time, whatever. The real process is a breakdown of the strong dipole field into a multipole field, with the strongest poles weakening. Eventually, the field reorganizes into one of the opposite orientation, only to slowly begin the process of flipping back the other way in the future. The cycle takes an average of 300.000 years.

[Orsino]

3. It's probably just trying...

...to get as far as possible from *.

[whistle]

4. I think you are right on that.....

[Tesha]

7. "We must not allow a North Pole gap!" -- Gen. Buck Turgidson (NT)