(Getty Images/Archive Photos)
Bad news for people who enjoy being alive: a river of liquid iron is causing the North and South Poles to slowly swap places.
This fabulous scientific discovery is accompanied by an additional fun fact: the Earth’s magnetic field is continuing to weaken at a rate of roughly five percent every 100 years.
In fact, the magnetic North Pole is moving away from Canada at such a rapid rate towards Siberia that it’s forced an update to the World Magnetic Model. The model is a crucial component for various geopositioning systems used in everything from ship navigation to smartphone trackers and maps. The current model was expected to be valid until 2020.
“They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable (safe) limit for navigational errors,” according to the science journal Nature.
Every year, geophysicists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Geological Survey do a check on how the Earth’s magnetic field is varying. This is necessary because the liquid iron flowing through the Earth’s core does not move in a consistent manner.
The movement of the north magnetic pole has been the object of study since 1831. Initially, it was tracked moving into the Arctic Ocean at a rate of about 10 miles each year. But, since the mid-1990s, it has picked up speed. In fact, It’s now shifting at a rate of about 35 miles a year.
WIBC host Tony Katz offered perspective Monday morning:
“I’m not saying we should go out into the street and burn tires, but when it comes to climate alarmists, I ask this question: ‘Do you think that human life is any match for the planet and mother nature?’ Are we all just out of our minds? One wobble will change everything.
“The planet makes moves and these moves outweigh anything we could possibly do.”
Click below to hear more from Tony.
