Ho Ho Ho, Eh?
Here's a little goodie I just learned about, in time for Canada's birthday tomorrow.
Canada claims the North Pole as part of its territory. Yes, the claim is contested by the U.S., Siberia, Norway and Denmark, because of the possibility of there being oil and/or gas beneath the underlying sea bed, but hey, I'm Canadian, so I'm going with there being maple leaves under there! If we daughters and sons of the true north are right, then that makes Santa Claus one of us. That's right, eh! The old gent himself is actually Canadian!
Now for those of you who dispute the existence of the jolly old elf, here's something you can't dispute. The Pole is on the move!
Magnetic North, the place where the geomagnetic field points vertically downward, was first defined as such by Sir William Gilbert in 1600; a definition that stands to this day. The first
expedition to reach this pole was led by James Clark Ross, who found it at Cape Adelaide on the Boothia Peninsula on June 1, 1831. When Roald Amundsen reached the Magnetic North in 1903 he found it to be at a slightly different location. IN 1947, Canadian government scientists Paul Serson and Jack Clark found the pole to be located at yet another location, at Allen Lake on Prince of Wales Island. Several measurements made since then by the Canadian government show that Magnetic North is continually moving northwest. Its location in 2003 was 78°18' North, 104° West, near Ellef Ringness Island, one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, in Canada. During the 20th century it is known to have moved 1100 km. Since 1970, its rate of motion has accelerated from 9 km/year to 40 km/year If maintained, this speed and direction would see it reaching Siberia in about 50 years. Scientists predict, however, that it will veer from its present course and slow down.
Something else to know is that, on any given day, the Pole may be anywhere up to 80 km away from its official position. The Pole's daily wandering forms an irregular oval around the official position. This diurnal divagation is caused by disturbances in the earth's magnetic field that result from its being constantly bombarded by streams of charged particles emitted by the sun. That is why the yearly location given for the Pole is actually just an average location.
Enough to make your head spin, eh?
Canada claims the North Pole as part of its territory. Yes, the claim is contested by the U.S., Siberia, Norway and Denmark, because of the possibility of there being oil and/or gas beneath the underlying sea bed, but hey, I'm Canadian, so I'm going with there being maple leaves under there! If we daughters and sons of the true north are right, then that makes Santa Claus one of us. That's right, eh! The old gent himself is actually Canadian!
Now for those of you who dispute the existence of the jolly old elf, here's something you can't dispute. The Pole is on the move!
Magnetic North, the place where the geomagnetic field points vertically downward, was first defined as such by Sir William Gilbert in 1600; a definition that stands to this day. The first
expedition to reach this pole was led by James Clark Ross, who found it at Cape Adelaide on the Boothia Peninsula on June 1, 1831. When Roald Amundsen reached the Magnetic North in 1903 he found it to be at a slightly different location. IN 1947, Canadian government scientists Paul Serson and Jack Clark found the pole to be located at yet another location, at Allen Lake on Prince of Wales Island. Several measurements made since then by the Canadian government show that Magnetic North is continually moving northwest. Its location in 2003 was 78°18' North, 104° West, near Ellef Ringness Island, one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, in Canada. During the 20th century it is known to have moved 1100 km. Since 1970, its rate of motion has accelerated from 9 km/year to 40 km/year If maintained, this speed and direction would see it reaching Siberia in about 50 years. Scientists predict, however, that it will veer from its present course and slow down.
Something else to know is that, on any given day, the Pole may be anywhere up to 80 km away from its official position. The Pole's daily wandering forms an irregular oval around the official position. This diurnal divagation is caused by disturbances in the earth's magnetic field that result from its being constantly bombarded by streams of charged particles emitted by the sun. That is why the yearly location given for the Pole is actually just an average location.
Enough to make your head spin, eh?
1 Comments:
My head is spinning alright. Good post!
Speaking seriously about our claim to the Arctic however -- the Fraser Institute has an interesting article about our need to assert our rights to the North. Right now we're hardly doing much to enforce our claim.
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