Saturday, July 30, 2011

A Science Lesson on Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field

Do you know that our planet's magnetic field is in a constant state of change?

This fact may not even be known to a lot of feng shui practitioners.

Fortunately, we have in our modern times, Google maps and satellite images for us to make a comparison and check the deviations. The generic directions can still be determined with fair accuracy.

However, if you are talking about zooming right down to a degree or two, then I shall wish you good luck. The reason being the reading you have taken may have deviated a degree or two over just a few years and Google satellite images can’t give you that level of precision. Hence , you can see, this fact can in some ways undermine the very soundness of certain feng shui methodologies.

Below are some extracts from an article published by NASA:

“Scientists have long known that the magnetic pole moves. James Ross located the pole for the first time in 1831 after an exhausting arctic journey during which his ship got stuck in the ice for four years. No one returned until the next century. In 1904, Roald Amundsen found the pole again and discovered that it had moved--at least 50 km since the days of Ross.”

The pole kept going during the 20th century, north at an average speed of 10 km per year, lately accelerating to 40 km per year…”

“Earth's magnetic field is changing in other ways, too: Compass needles in Africa, for instance, are drifting about 1 degree per decade. And globally the magnetic field has weakened 10% since the 19th century.”














Source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/29dec_magneticfield/

Regards
Alvin Chua

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