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The north magnetic pole, also known as the magnetic north pole, is a point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the planet's magnetic field points vertically downward (in other words, if a magnetic compass needle is allowed to rotate in three dimensions, it will point straight down).
Like the North Magnetic Pole, the North Geomagnetic Pole attracts the north pole of a bar magnet and so is in a physical sense actually a magnetic south pole. It is the center of the 'open' magnetic field lines which connect to the interplanetary magnetic field and provide a direct route for the solar wind to reach the ionosphere.
Historically, the north and south poles of a magnet were first defined by the Earth's magnetic field, not vice versa, since one of the first uses for a magnet was as a compass needle. A magnet's North pole is defined as the pole that is attracted by the Earth's North Magnetic Pole, in the arctic region, when the magnet is suspended so it can ...
British explorer Sir James Clark Ross discovered the magnetic north pole in 1831 in northern Canada, approximately 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) south of the true North Pole.
As with Earth's, Jupiter's magnetic field is mostly a dipole, with north and south magnetic poles at the ends of a single magnetic axis. [2] On Jupiter the north pole of the dipole (where magnetic field lines point radially outward) is located in the planet's northern hemisphere and the south pole of the dipole lies in its southern hemisphere.
Now, NASA has released a 3D infrared movie of Jupiter's north polar region, depicting the intense storms in the area, as well as the dynamo that powers the planet's massive magnetic field.
The magnetic field of a magnetic dipole has an inverse cubic dependence in distance, so its order of magnitude at the earth surface can be approximated by multiplying the above result with (R outer core ⁄ R Earth) 3 = (2890 ⁄ 6370) 3 = 0.093 , giving 2.5×10 −5 Tesla, not far from the measured value of 3×10 −5 Tesla at the equator.
Over the past 150 years, the magnetic North Pole has casually wandered 685 miles across northern Canada. But right now it’s racing 25 miles a year to the northwest.