We have a piece of shocking news – the magnetic fields of the earth are shifting and the reasons behind them are not quite clear yet.
As per reports, the magnetic North Pole is moving away from Canada towards Siberia and this will play a big part in the accuracy of GPS (Global Positioning System) signals.
GPS signals will lose their accuracy and it will probably hamper everybody’s day to day life. This will affect our location tracking sensors, it will not only affect the common man’s life but even the GPS signals on submarines, planes will be weaker and therefore, destructive.
Story Behind This Discovery
A model that helps ships, planes, submarines, and even Google Maps that work on GPS navigate, World Magnetic Model, was last updated in 2015 and the next update was scheduled in 2020. But the shift is so drastic that the model had to be updated by researchers on an urgent basis.
The magnetic field is in a permanent state of flux, the magnetic north wanders, and about every hundred thousand years the polarity flips so that a compass would point to the south instead of north.
According to Arnaud Chulliat, a Geomagnetist at the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information, the error keeps increasing all the time. He specified, “In early 2018, as part of our regular assessment of the WMM, we found that the model exceeded its specification for declination only three years into the five-year WMM cycle.”
The reason behind this was zeroed down to a combined effect of a global geomagnetic acceleration pulse that occurred in 2015-2016, and a swiftly changing magnetic field in the North Polar Area.
What Might Be The Reason?
There might be two reasons affecting the shift in the planet equally, one being the moving pole and shifts deep within the planet being the other.
The liquid core of the earth is a factor that plays a major part in the planet’s magnetic field. The liquid churns and flows causing the field to change around the world.
How Will It Affect Us?
In the era of smartphones, no one dares to step out of the house without switching on the GPS.
This update doesn’t affect GPS receivers, but only those which don’t rely on the magnetic North Pole. However, in most parts of the world where the population is more, satellites are optimized for reception of signals. This will definitely affect the GPS accuracy and reception in the Arctic.