Canada Loses North Pole 79
An anonymous reader submits "The Earth's roaming magnetic pole has moved out of Canada and into international waters as it heads towards Siberia. The magnetic pole has been within Canada's current boundaries for at least the past 400 years and left sometime in the past year after rapidly picking up speed in 2001. If it keeps to its current course and expected speed, it should reach Siberia by the middle of the century. There's speculation that December's tsunami causing earthquake may have been one of the factors causing the pole to move more quickly than predicted."
Mr President, Dr. Evil is on the line... (Score:5, Funny)
Good day, gentlemen. As you are no doubt aware, I have perfected a device capable of manipulating the earth's magnetic field. This device has already shifted the position of the earth's poles by a significant margin, and will continue to do so, eventually forcing the poles to swap positions entirely. For this reason, I've christened this latest caper 'Operation Roly-Poley'...
You see, gentlemen, Operation Roly-Poley will continue to destabilize the magnetic field of our fragile world, causing geological and meteorological disturbances on a global scale...that is, of course...unless you pay me...
One hundred billion kajillion fafillion dollaaaars!
(cue dramatic music)
Gentlemen, you have my demands...peace out.
Re:Mr President, Dr. Evil is on the line... (Score:2)
Re:Mr President, Dr. Evil is on the line... (Score:4, Funny)
I'll charge a 10$ admission fee and cutyou in for 40% of all profits.
Right here please.
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.800293,-74.1198
I suspect we will have a substantial volume as this is located in suburban New Jersey and will attract more visitors than the middle of some frozen tundra.
Will the north pole melt? I can have a suitably large refrigeration device constructed if necessecary.
Re:Mr President, Dr. Evil is on the line... (Score:4, Funny)
Coordinates... confirmed.
Warhead arming... confirmed.
Lauch sequence... Start.
3... 2... 1...
[/Soothing Female Voice]
Finally, a Slashdotter I can moderate to hell!
Re:Mr President, Dr. Evil is on the line... (Score:2)
We understand that you are, or will soon be, the recipient of a payment totalizing one hundred billion kajillion fafillion dollars. We have taken the liberty to help you with calculating the amount of tax due for the said sum, which amounts to one hundred billion kajillion fafillion dollars minus one. Please send a check or a truck with the appropriate amount of due tax to the usual PA address.
Kindly,
The IRS
P.S. Remember to also file in your state tax return.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Does that mean... (Score:1)
I didn't know it. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I didn't know it. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I didn't know it. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I didn't know it. (Score:1)
Re:I didn't know it. (Score:1)
So will santa be changing accents? (Score:3, Funny)
Canada didn't lose it (Score:5, Funny)
Canada Loses North Pole (Score:5, Funny)
Why does everyone always blame Canada?
Maybe they didn't lose it, maybe it was stolen, maybe it snuck off on it's own, maybe it's just on summer vacation.
Re:Canada Loses North Pole (Score:3, Funny)
Because Canada is the source for all of the moral degeneracy in the world. I can think of no country that hates freedom more.
It's time we liberate Canuckistan.
Re:Canada Loses North Pole (Score:2)
Maybe it got tired of watching Terrance & Philip all the time, with their weird flapping heads.
Re:Canada Loses North Pole (Score:2)
Re:Canada Loses North Pole (Score:3, Funny)
An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:3, Informative)
It will happen in the close future. Actually, it'll flip-flop back and forth a few times before settling down in a reverse manner.
While it's doing that, we'll be exposed to quite a bit more radiation than usual since the magnetic field is what stops most of the nasty radiation.
This may
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:2)
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:2)
There aren't any statistics except for hard to prove information that intelligence in general has been losing ground.
A large reason for not being able to prove it is because there isn't a control group to compare all of us against. If the Earth's magnetic field and it's shielding do effect the human brain in any way, it's a world-wide phenomenon. (There are many other factors that effect t
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:1)
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:1)
Well, the "dummening" of the population of which you speak must be confined to only the population of this fair website, as the exact opposite trend has been noticed by numerous researchers on human IQ for many years. To quoth the 'pedia [wikipedia.org]: "The Flynn effect is the continued year-on-year rise of IQ test scores, an effect seen in all parts of the world, although at greatly varying rates. ... The average rate of rise seems to be around three IQ points per decade."
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:1)
> But... I thought the average IQ was always 100.
IQ tests have two numbers used in their scoring process. One is the raw score (basically some value based on how many answers you got right or wrong) and the other is the "normalized" score (an adjusted score based on how others did on this particular test) and that's the one that's one that always has an average of 100. Normalization is the process of giving the proposed IQ test to a sample population and then using their scores, a gaussian distributi
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:2)
Yeah, and that's why everyone who undergoes an MRI scan immediately becomes either a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon. Remember to attach a magnet to your tin-foil hats, everyone!
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:2)
You've watched too many 1950's monster movies.
An aligned magnetic field over the lifetime of a person is nothing like one huge dose of a circular magnet and radio waves.
In the same manner, a person who has always had a healthy diet will not be the same as a person who has only had an unhealthy diet and then eats one me
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:3, Funny)
God I hope not. I'm way too old to learn how to read maps upside down.
Re:An upcoming shift of the magnetic poles? (Score:5, Informative)
For what it's worth, I am a geophysicist...
If by "polar shift", you mean a magnetic reversal, then one will happen, sooner or later. The main field appears to be weaking slowly at the moment. On the other hand, the actual location of the magnetic pole is continually shifting.
Another poster gave a link to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/reversals.ht ml [pbs.org]. If you look at some of the quicktime animations of a reversal in progress, you can see what happens to the field at the Earth's surface. The dominant feature of the current field is a dipole field - which is why the field can be nicely approximated to a bar magnet. As a reversal takes place, the dipole component of the field falls in strength, and quadrapole and then octopole features start to dominate - meaning there won't be an actual pair of poles.
The original poster said;
This is mentioned in the original article. Although not impossible, I would tend to think it's pretty unlikely (but my speciality is seismology now, not geomagnetism). Big subduction zone earthquakes, which produce a significant vertical movement of mass, do affect the earth's moment of inertia. This leads to (small) changes in rotation speed and the orientation of the rotation pole. This is because the moment of inertia is dependant on the mass distribtion of the entire earth.
The magnetic field is produced in the liquid outer core. It's in constant motion. There's also a difference in the net rotation of the core relative to the rest of the earth, which causes a continual westward drift of the field. This means the poles are always moving. Ships have been measuring the declination between geographic and magnetic north for centuries - the movement of the magnetic pole isn't uniform.
Re:I don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't think so. (Score:1)
in siberia (Score:2, Funny)
it had to be said.
End of the world... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:End of the world... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry, sir. But if you're going to make lame stereotypical cracks about Canada, you'll also have to write them in French.
Re:End of the world... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:End of the world... (Score:3, Informative)
It's actually funnier if you can speak french...
(It's so badly translated, it doesn't make sense...)
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
Re:End of the world... (Score:2)
Re:End of the world... (Score:2)
Actually it says something along the lines of:"The end world. The Canadiens says what is continue, eh?"
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
I got the gestalt of it, and that's what counts in translation.
Thank you, by the way, for your translation.
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
La fin du monde: Les canadiens disent "Hey, que se passe-t-il?"
Where's your teacher from?
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
J'essayerai (Score:2)
Re:End of the world... (Score:2)
Mon ortographie est probablement mauvaise, mais tout-le-meme c'est proche.
Lost North Pole (Score:1)
Re:End of the world... (Score:1)
Re:Maybe it's for the best... Let's generalize... (Score:2)
Sorry, I don't have a link handy to explain more...
Ob Corky and the Juice Pigs reference (Score:3, Funny)
Are taking their toll
I even get excited when I see the North Pole
See the North Pole...
I'm the only gay Eskimo
Only gay Eskimo
I'm the only one I know
The only one I know-oh-oh-oh
I'm the only gay Eskimo
In my tribe
Only gay eskimo [kimberlychapman.com], eh.
Great... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
One more headline nitpick (Score:1)
Re:One more headline nitpick (Score:2)
Is this headline deliberately cute, or just sloppy?
It's deliberately cute the way Precious Moments figurines [mddoultons.on.ca] are deliberately cute :-)
Last Reason (Score:2)
Man, this is really bad news. Without the North Pole in Canada it is going to warm up and all the snow and permafrost will melt, and uh Canada will be like a real country that has things like summer and liquid water and stuff like that and people might even want to live there even if they are not Inuits. They might even start thinking uppity like they are a real country and not just the Maple Leaf state.
The only good thing that I can see coming from this is that the NHL has got to be cancelled permanently
Re:Last Reason (Score:2)
I would say that this is also going to lead to a world-wide shortage of Maple Syrup. Definitely stock up before the rush.
Re:North Pole shifting Canada into a warmer climat (Score:2)
Re:North Pole shifting Canada into a warmer climat (Score:1)
Once the pole shift occurs, it is almost sure the magnetic field decreasing will modify the amount of radiation from outer space, mostly from the sun, wich hits the ground.
The 'magnetosphere' seems to have been protecting life on Earth from outer space electromagnetic radiation. However, there is evidence that it hasn't been always that way.
This point is assured by paleonthological register in ancient rock, permitting us to suppo
In other news ... (Score:2)
How the Kremlin Stole Christmas (Score:1)