Magnets, how do they work?

I’ve had the joy of seeing the Aurora Borealis in northern Maine in 1981. It was hues of green and red. What no one tells you there’s is a sound with it. To me…it sounds like a saw hit by a mallet….it was the highlight of my young adult life!

I am having a terrible case of anxiety these days but listening to StarTalk gives me strength to confront it. Thank you Dr Tyson and Mr Nice.

I live in Virginia. We saw the Aurora Borealis last night right here!!! It filled the sky with ribbons and columns of color and it was spectacular!! Social media posts were instantly flooded with thousands of people’s pictures , it was such a unifying experience. This fulfilled a life goal and encouraged my daughter (who wants to go to college to study Astrophysics by the way) to start a travel fund so she can go see and experience all the awesome cosmological events first hand!

No one ever asks HOW are the Northern Lights? 😔

"Pay what you owe, Santa!" made me laugh more than it should have.

I lived in Alaska for 20 years and I had an affinity for knowing when the lights were going to come out and dance. My step sister had not seen them in 40 years until I called her one night and said get outside and look up. For native alaskans the northern lights are the campfires of the ancestors and the shadow and light play are caused by the ancestors dancing around the campfires. And yes there is a noise associated with them it's almost like a static and there's also a legend that you can whistle at the lights and it will make them change. Alaska was an amazing place to live

Neil and Chuck for 2024

3:08 bruh quoted the boondocks 🤣🤣😂 love it chuck!

I was lucky enough to witness an amazing auroral display in northern Minnesota about a month ago. They filled half the sky with green and purple pulsating lights, with some red in there too. Even auroras I saw in Iceland didn’t compare to this. Best night of my life.

Greetings from Ghana! ANOTHER awesome episode, gentlemen!! 👊🏾✊🏾

I will watch all of you explainers. Thank you

This one was fun. I am fortunate to live in a place you can see the northern lights occasionally. I wish everyone could see them at least once!😊

I love star talk

A wonderful way to explain centrifugal force, truly insightful.

Here I am attending my classes which I was supposed to attend when I was in school. Thank you teacher!!!

I like when he said "They don't tell you that in the Boy Scouts." 😆

I have been so looking forward to you guys covering this subject. Many thanks. 🙏💚

4:12 I thought he was going to say that they make the compass's signs opposite of what they actually are. So the south magnetic pole of the compass reads as north and vice versa.

Star Talk =is Sooooooooo Gooooooood❕️

I remember when I was a kid back in the late 80's, my parents and I were driving back from North Carolina to Virginia late at night. When I looked up in the sky, I could see green, blue yellow 'clouds' passing through. The Aurora Borealis is the only thing that looks like what I saw....I've never seen it again since.

"Pay what you owe Santa!" - i caught Chuck's quoting of Boondocks. That was a classic episode.

Growing up as a very young kid I always admired & looked up to this brilliant and amazing soul!❤

That was sneaky Dr. Tyson! But pretty awesome!😂😂. Thank you for expanding our knowledge!💚🖖

The science of the movie "The Core" comes to mind. Great explainer!

This one was extra interesting. Thanks gentlemen!

You know, I never though about that, but it makes so much sense. Because if you get two normal.magnet the two norther part of them push each other away. Thank you for telling .e that Neil. I love learning new fact. Thats why I watch this. You'll alway be my favorite scientist.

Awesome as always 👍

what I was taught in school was the phrase used was ' the North seeking pole '. The Magnetic pole is the reference being the field that generates the compass needle response so the north pointing needle end is the South pole of the magnet needle.

Thanks prof. De Grasse for sharing your studies with us . You are a great educator.

Thank you for what you do

And once again thank you very much for the Educational Service you guys provide a love watching the two of you

I would love a follow-up episode to this. What will actually happen when/if the magnetic poles flip in the next few decades? Is our infrastructure, sensitive electronic devices, GPS and other systems going to keep working as nothing happened?

Very interesting, like always! I always wonder why some magnets are weak and others are super strong...

This channel is so interesting and cool

I suddenly have a craving for steamed hams

I love these so much

I learned something new today❤️ That’s all, thank you.

Favorite channel

I feel like I need to put on a protective cap so my mind stays intact when it’s blown.🤯

Great episode, I wish you also talked upon is aurora borealis dangerous for humans and technology?

I wish they did more animated demonstrations, visually helps me remember it

This guys a legend hes one of my favorite scientist his show cosmos was amazeing and he was also really good in universe and so much more

Could it be that the inventor of the compass mislabeled the needle? It pointed in the northerly direction, so he called it the north pole when it is actually the south pole on the needle.

Thanks!

Thanks for a great explainer. I just had the pleasure of watching awesome aurora borealis in northeastern Canada a few days ago. You did get one thing wrong, though. Santa doesn't live in the north pole. He lives in Finnish Lapland at a place called Korvatunturi 😄

I loved the little Boondocks nod

So south of the equator do compasses so point north, or flip and point south?

Love you sir!

the needle on a compass is positive/negative, the Earth's magnetic poles are positive/negative, the north/south on a compass is to show the user the direction of north/south.

I always thought, that we just switch up the pointer's names in the compasses. It looked like a simpler solution to the magnetic poles naming issue.

Sun: Charged particle attack!!! Earth: magnetic field cloak!!! Mars: ….ah crap

Does anyone know of any videos where Neil gives his thoughts on the lights on proxima B ? That many claims out there it's hard to know

@StarTalk Dr Tyson, can you please explain Cold Fusion?

What...nothing on the space collision today? Darn...I was hoping that was the topic today! But this is great!!!

The north end of a compass needle is south, so it will be attracted to the north pole. iirc, the right hand rule confirms this, the video 'Solenoid Basics Explained' shows this.

thank you for explaining. metal is heavier than stone so when earth was molten it fell towards the core. why did no one tell me that before. now i understand why metal is in core

When the polls flip, would someone in the equator be able to see an aurora or would this not happen because of how the magnetic field would change from north to south and south to north? Is it an instant flip with nothing being able to have the chance of physically moving to the equator or would the change take time?

7:28 Dynamo's rotor magnetic poles are flipped? Isn't it the case for rotor of induction motor?

Chuck's expression killed it .. when NDGT said south magnetic pole is in North

So how long does the it take for the magnetic field to flip and how long is at zero?

Nice Boondocks reference Chuck

Can you please do a video on van allen belt.

Amazing video, mate! Also, Ignacio Bahamondes was there! Chilean UFC fighter. He's got some crazy knock outs! 🇨🇱

Can you do a video on the Tree 3 idea..Myke

Come up to kuujjuaq quebec one day! The northern lights show towards the end of summer!

What Neil asked "which way does the compass point?", I totally shouted "South!" at the screen. :D (Although, yes, I should have correctly specified "magnetic South". It is correct to say North, if you mean geographic North.)

Maybe the compass needle is a magnetic southpole diguised as northpole and therefore earth magnetic north is real. It is all a matter of definition.

Coulda sworn i saw this year's ago on this very channel

Here's a curious question: I already knew about the fact that the north pole (and I assume the south pole) moves around a fair bit. What I would be curious about is how large of an area takes up the magnetic north pole? I'm guessing it's not a pin head area where if you stand directly over the 'pole' and move the compass around yourself, the compass's needle will constantly point at you until you give up and go home. But I have no idea how large the magnetic north pole area is! (And as an aside, I'm uneducatedly guessing that if one stands in that area, the needle would perhaps try to point straight down?)

So Dr Tyson, in saying that the Earth's South magnetic pole is in the geographic North, are you saying that there is an inherent property of "Northness" that is possessed by all compasses? Or wasn't the N pole of magnets just so named because of where they pointed? Would the N pole of the bar magnet still be so labeled if earth had no magnetic poles?

Boondocks references is just not something I expected from my explainers 😂

Where are the magnetic poles during the time they're flipping? At mid point are the poles on the equator?

Love chucks boondocks reference haha 😄

Please make a explainer video of Bose-Einstein condensate

So what was named first the poles of the earth or the poles of the magnet?

That Einstein basketball example was from The Far Side.

Hey Neil and Chuck, love your work I've been enjoying star talk for a few years now and I've been using a lot of the information I learn from it at work. I'm a professional Northern Lights Chaser. I guide and photograph Aurora Borealis in Northern Norway. A very interesting video about the changing of the magnetic pole but I feel like you only briefly mentioned the Aurora. It's such a complex phenomen that I think after 6 years I'm starting to understand but having a full explainer from you would help many people who do the same job I do, especially trainees who train with my company, and people who travel to see the Aurora. I was wondering if you're interested in doing a collaboration for a full length Aurora explainer?

This was a clip from one of their podcasts

Some badass smoke

Love you❤

A gyro compass and toilets are awesome... 😅🤓 Thanks to explain it though.

A compass still does exactly what it is supposed to do, pointing out the north *direction* (which has the south magnetic pole). I don't think it was ever made to show where the north magnetic pole is.

If the last Magnetic Pole Reversal was about 780.000 y ago and these reversals happens about every 500.000 y, does it mean its due? Also, I read that a Magnetic Pole Reversal takes about 7000 y to complete, if so during this flippening the Earth will get more radiation from solar winds and cosmic radiation, does that mean that we would not survive? And finally, how long before a Magnetic Pole Reversal occurs can we predict when it will happen if we could at all?

As a young kid I realized a compass North pin is negatively charged because I used a magnet on it. Pretty simple tbh

Wow. My brains are legit blown😱

Cool!

I always thought that a compass needle was magnetised such that the pole of the needle which was labelled north was actually its south pole

I just thought they put the magnet in backwards. So the red part of the needle is actually the south of the tiny magnet under the red.

I hv always been confused coz my little spherical compass always points in the opposite direction of the North. I must get it checked now.

What would be different in our lives without the poles?

It would seem you may have noticed my tweets? If so, thank you for reading my ideas there! If not, well that makes sense too. You are a busy guy. In that case, thank you for the very cool episode of Startalk that talks about everything surrounding the ideas I presented in a series of tweets to you. This could be very, very important information for many to understand, as it will likely play a key role in forecasting earthquakes. I will give a brief overview of what I am referring to here, for those interested. Anyone who has been through introductory physics, or even many general science courses, knows that you can induce physical changes in a magnet by affecting it's field, without ever touching it. Now, the Earth's field, as Neil describes very aptly in this episode, is generated by enormous currents of liquid metal in the core of our planet. These magma flows would likely effect the triggering of earthquakes if they change, especially suddenly. It is not a stretch to imagine flow distortions sending pressure waves against the inside of the mantle, like new ripples or flow changes in a stream or river when you change the flow of the water somehow. These would be ripples in billions of tons of liquid metal, so could interact with already tensioned fault zones by colliding with the inner mantle. But, how would one cause these ripples? Well, this is where our sun and the Northern and Southern lights come in. Auroral activity is caused by huge storms of charged particles colliding with our magnetic field, that is generated by this dynamo system inside the Earth. We are talking physically tons and tons of material colliding with and being redirected by our magnetic field alone. This would invariably cause distortions in the magnetic field. The larger and denser the cloud of charged particles from the sun redirected by our B field, the more it becomes distorted temporarily. Now, this must cause induced physical changes in the dynamo system in the core, similarly to when you use a piece of metal to drag a magnet across a table without touching it, but on a much larger scale, with billions of tons of liquid metal. This could potentially cause flow distortions within the dynamo system, ripples, to trigger earthquakes. Now, we have research that shows a correlation between CMEs, or coronal mass ejections (when the sun shoots a large cloud of charged particles at the Earth), and earthquakes, so it isnt far fetched to think this may be the physical causal connection between the two phenomena. So, to use this, it would seem that we could try to build a virtual model of the dynamo system using seismic data and magnetic field data to correctly model the shape of the solid core and roughly how the liquid metal flows are at some initial time. We would want to add as correct of a model of the mantle and crust to model the whole Earth. Then, we can shoot virtual CMEs of various sizes and from various angles at this virtual earth, and see how it causes ripples in our modeled dynamo system. This data could allow us to line up where these ripples collide with the modeled mantle, and allow us to attempt to forecast earthquakes and volcanic eruptions based on what we currently know about fault zones and different tensions they are under. If someone else doesnt get to this first, I will do my best to generate a model like this once my own situation has become more stable. I just wanted to share this set of ideas as freely as possible because of the level of importance to the whole Earth. Ideas like these are never really our own anyways, especially if they can potentially save lives or even entire cities. Most of the components of these ideas were other peoples as well, and I am sure I am not the only one considering this set of ideas because of this. If we ever see further than others, it is because we had the priveledge of standing on the shoulders of giants. Thank for reading my rambling here, if you did. If I can get a working model in Mathematica or Matlab sometime soon, I will share that freely as well. Again, ideas like this, that can save lives across the globe, they arent meant to be held hostage for credit, because they arent really all our own ever anyways. Thank you Neil again for this awesome video, and all the rest of your content, from Startalk to Cosmos and beyond. Carl would be so proud of everything you are doing sir, and I am as well. Every day, you bring more science to a world that so badly needs it. It will always be appreciated. ❤❤

It's actually not exciting the molecules, it's exciting electron fields of the atoms in the molecules. When they return back to their normal state they release photons because of the law of conservation of energy.

Just don't have anything plugged in when it happens right? What would it do to our power grid?

If I were to build a compass and one needle pointed towards the North I would probably Mark that as North. My question is how do you tell what is north and south on a magnet?

@Neil I believe that the Cambrian "explosion" of different forms of life happened when there was a big drop in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field. So the decreases in the magnetosphere that have happened in the past are not correlated to extinction events; but there does seem to be at least a bit of evidence that less magnetic field sheilding Earth from the Solar Wind can be a source of a higher rate of mutation in the lifeforms here. I wonder if anyone has looked into whether there are diversification events associated with magnetic field reversals and other drops in the strength of the Magnetosphere in the past.

The South Pole is in the North. The logic is sound but seeing its a compass, could it not be that the pol Inter is not simply miss labeled so the South of the pointer agent is labeled North so it actually points North?

Northern lights are seen in Canada's northern area almost monthly.

Neil, aren't the North and South magnetic pole designations simply arbitrary assignments? and as such aren't the north pointing needle of my compass in fact a south pole that is simply painted with a little 'N" ?

Reminds me of True North, Grid North, Magnetic North and using a declination diagram to calculate the degree difference between each 😅