Empirical Earth · Flight & Navigation

Magnetism, monopoles & the poles

Magnets always come with two poles, and a single one has never been found. Earth has both, and the south magnetic pole is a real, mapped place that drifts enough to need re-surveyi

The claim

“A compass always points north, so there’s one magnetic monopole at the disc’s center.”

What is measured

A compass needle dips toward the ground at an angle that climbs from 0° at the magnetic equator to 90° at the poles. That is Earth’s dipole, charted for centuries.

Sources

1. Magnetic monopoles & Maxwell's equations. ∇·B = 0 (Gauss's law for magnetism); no isolated magnetic charge has ever been observed (e.g., MoEDAL searches at the LHC). Standard E&M (Griffiths, link
2. Geomagnetism & the World Magnetic Model 2025. NOAA NCEI & British Geological Survey — geographic / magnetic-dip / geomagnetic poles, inclination, declination, secular drift toward Siberia. n link
3. The South Atlantic Anomaly and the offset geomagnetic dipole. Earth’s magnetic dipole is tilted ~11° from the rotation axis and offset ~500 km from the geographic center, producing a region link
4. Earth’s magnetosphere. The solar wind compresses Earth’s magnetic field into a cavity: a bow shock near 15 Earth radii, a dayside magnetopause near 10 Earth radii, and a magnetotail stretchi link
5. The geodynamo, not a bar magnet. Iron loses its magnetism above its Curie point near 770 °C, and Earth’s core is far hotter, so the field is not a permanent magnet; it is generated by the co link

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