Audiobook8 hours
North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth's Magnetism
Written by Gillian Turner
Narrated by Cat Gould
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
This "fantastic story" of one of physics' great riddles takes us through centuries of scientific history (Simon Lamb, author of Devil in the Mountain).
Why do compass needles point north-but not quite north? What guides the migration of birds, whales, and fish across the world's oceans? How is Earth able to sustain life under an onslaught of solar wind and cosmic radiation? For centuries, the world's great scientists have grappled with these questions, all rooted in the same phenomenon: Earth's magnetism.
Over two thousand years after the invention of the compass, Einstein called the source of Earth's magnetic field one of greatest unsolved mysteries of physics. Here, for the first time, is the complete history of the quest to understand the planet's attractive pull-from the ancient Greeks' fascination with lodestone to the geological discovery that the North Pole has not always been in the North-and to the astonishing modern conclusions that finally revealed the true source.
Skillfully told, North Pole, South Pole unfolds the human story behind the science: that of the inquisitive, persevering, and often dissenting thinkers who unlocked the secrets at our planet's core.
Why do compass needles point north-but not quite north? What guides the migration of birds, whales, and fish across the world's oceans? How is Earth able to sustain life under an onslaught of solar wind and cosmic radiation? For centuries, the world's great scientists have grappled with these questions, all rooted in the same phenomenon: Earth's magnetism.
Over two thousand years after the invention of the compass, Einstein called the source of Earth's magnetic field one of greatest unsolved mysteries of physics. Here, for the first time, is the complete history of the quest to understand the planet's attractive pull-from the ancient Greeks' fascination with lodestone to the geological discovery that the North Pole has not always been in the North-and to the astonishing modern conclusions that finally revealed the true source.
Skillfully told, North Pole, South Pole unfolds the human story behind the science: that of the inquisitive, persevering, and often dissenting thinkers who unlocked the secrets at our planet's core.
Related to North Pole, South Pole
Related audiobooks
The Mission: A True Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cosmic Impact: Understanding the Threat to Earth from Asteroids and Comets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrigins of the Universe: The Cosmic Microwave Background and the Search for Quantum Gravity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Alien Perspective: A New View of Humanity and the Cosmos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Impact: How Rocks from Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Exoplanets (Goldsmith): Hidden Worlds and the Quest for Extraterrestrial Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Graphene Revolution: The Weird Science of the Ultra-thin Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of Ten Billion Earths: How We Learn About Our Planet's Past and Future From Distant Exoplanets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dark Matter & Dark Energy: The Hidden 95% of the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow It Began: A Time-Traveler's Guide to the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5T. Rex and the Crater of Doom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We'll Live on Mars Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Magicians: Great Minds and the Central Miracle of Science Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Day We Found the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Discovering Mars: A History of Observation and Exploration of the Red Planet Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Physics For You
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Quantum Physics: What Everyone Needs to Know Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Science of Interstellar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World According to Physics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Relativity of Einstein Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Weird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quantum Spirituality: Science, Gnostic Mysticism, and Connecting with Source Consciousness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for North Pole, South Pole
Rating: 3.642857107142857 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
14 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I sometimes forget the advance of Science is not all that smooth. Gillian Turner has written a nice popularization of the discovery and explanation of the Earth’s magnetic field, starting all the way back with the legendary Greek shepherd Magnes, who found his iron-nailed boots stuck to a lodestone. The use of a compass to find direction apparently dates back to 1st century AD China, but doesn’t arrive in Europe until much later; early explanations usually involved a large mountain of lodestone at the North Pole. Secular variation, diurnal variation, and the fact that the compass didn’t point exactly north were all discovered by the 1600s, and things settled down to map-making (according to Turned, Edmund Halley’s maps of magnetic variation were the first use of contour lines).
The next major event was the discovery of “polar wandering” and magnetic reversals in the 1950s. My childhood recollections are that there was no debate about the reality of magnetic reversals at the time; Turner, however, points out that the idea was almost universally dismissed by geophysicists, especially after Nobelist Louis Néel described a theoretical way to induce anti-sense paleomagnetism in volcanic rock (i.e., a way that a certain combination of mineralogy and cooling history could cause the north-seeking poles of magnetic domains in the rock to align on south rather than north). One of the early papers on magnetic reversals and sea-floor spreading was dismissed by a reviewer as “possibly suitable for cocktail party conversation but not for a serious scientific journal”.
However, eventually things worked out; more and more and more evidence came in from the field, and supercomputer power allowed construction of a dynamo model of the earth that would actually reverse now and then (although it took 2000 hours on a Cray C90 for the model to do it). Both magnetic reversals and “polar wandering” were crucial in the development of plate tectonics theory. The model only rarely results in a reversal; most of the time the field drops to zero (well, the dipole field drops to zero but other components do not) and then returns in the same direction. Turner speculates briefly on what might happen if the dipole field disappears; do animals that depend on magnetic fields for navigation get lost? Do we get aurorae all the way to the equator? – but doesn’t go anywhere with this.
Interesting things learned on the way:
Magnetite (“lodestone”) only becomes magnetic (i.e., a magnet itself rather than just being attracted to a magnet) if struck by lightning.
The difference between ferromagnetism (all the magnetic domains in the material are aligned the same way), antiferromagnetism ( adjacent magnetic domains are aligned in opposite directions), ferrimagnetism (domains are aligned in both directions, but there is a preponderance in one direction so the material is weekly magnetic), dimagnetism (when an external magnetic field is applied, the material develops an induced magnetic field in the opposite direction) and paramagnetism (when an external magnetic field is applied the material develops an induced magnetic field in the same direction).
Light and quick reading; no math. Many illustrations. The bibliography seems a little weak and is mostly other “popular” works. The author is a lecturer at the University of Wellington in New Zealand and, according to the jacket blurb, is “...winner of numerous awards for excellence in teaching and science communication”; based on this book they’re well deserved. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Here is a history of magnetism. Is no simple theme, but the explanation from this book is more difficult. I think that it is a first global approach for earth reversal of poles, however need much insights & details, naturally 200 pages can create curiosity.. The main problem of earth magnetism remain unsolved actually