URTH |
From: "Mitchell A. Bailey" <MAB@lindau.net> Subject: (urth) What On Urth Would You Do With Monopoles if You Had'em, Anyway? Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 14:24:07 Furthermore, regarding use of monopoles and interactions w/ Urth's alleged magnetic field - rising above the trees to see the forest... Back when I first started posting, I posed a question about examples of the use of magnetic compasses on Urth. I couldn't find any. Most of the navigation potrayed for us takes place on Gyoll, a river channel, where a compass would be of limited use anyway. The exception was Eata sailing on the new ocean of Ushas, upon which he was lost regardless. Navigation on the open ocean of Urth I suppose could be accomplished in the absence of magentic compasses by celestial sightings or the Polynesian method, by which adepts actually read the wave patterns. Or maybe a GPS network of some kind still exists. Eata and the other sailors never to my recollection make any reference whatsoever to the use of magnetic compasses. Then there is that story "The Tale of the Student and His Son". You would think that a compass would have been a salvation in the channels of Ogre's Isle, yet no use was made of one. However, when the ship was given a directional datum (the flights of birds), it was soon able to reach its destination. (Awright Bailey, what's your point?!) My point is that Urth should have little or no discernable magnetic field, and this seems borne out empirically by the text. It is widely accepted that Earth's magentic field is generated by the currents induced in its core of molten iron and nickel by rotation and convection. Urth is said to have nearly solidified through to the extent that plate tectonics and volcanism have ceased and the crust has shrunken. Urth presumably would have less of a magnetic field than Mars-er Verthandi. So I have to wonder how much good any levitation method which relies on interaction with Urth's magnetic field might be? *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/