During the 20th century it moved 1,100 km (680 mi), and since 1970 its rate of motion has accelerated from 9 to 52 km (5.6 to 32.3 mi) per year (2001–2007 average; see also polar drift).

While poles have drifted and even swapped places numerous times over the course of Earth’s long history, what’s different about this recent shift is how quickly it’s happening. From 1999 to 2005, Earth’s magnetic north pole went from shifting 9 miles at most each year to as much as 37 miles in a year.

The North Pole has moved about 4 meters since 1980. The Guardian reports that a study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that recent human activity has shifted the Earth’s axis by an unprecedented margin.

Over the past 150 years, the magnetic North Pole has casually wandered 685 miles across northern Canada. But right now it’s racing 25 miles a year to the northwest.

In the paper, published in the journal Science, experts say there is currently rapid movement of the north magnetic pole across the Northern Hemisphere — which could signal another reversal is on the cards.

But what would happen if Earth’s magnetic field disappeared tomorrow? A larger number of charged solar particles would bombard the planet, putting power grids and satellites on the fritz and increasing human exposure to higher levels of cancer-causing ultraviolet radiation.

A flipped magnetic field could seriously disrupt communications systems and power grids. It could also produce multiple north and south poles, and birds, whales and other migratory animals that use the field to establish a sense of direction could encounter problems.

However, tracing the Martian surface magnetic field indicated that Mars lost its magnetic field 4 billion years ago, leaving the atmosphere under severe attack by the solar wind. After 500 million years, the Martian atmosphere is substantially destroyed, all due to the disappearance of Mars global magnetic field.

For years, scientists believed that this field disappeared over 4 billion years ago, causing Mars’ atmosphere to be slowly stripped away by solar wind. Like Earth, Mars global magnetic field is believed to have been the result of a dynamo effect caused by action in its core.

Although it is stronger than previously suspected, Mars’ magnetic field is nowhere near the strength of Earth’s and is not powerful enough to protect the planet from the solar wind. Because of this, mission scientists have been able to study the interaction between the solar wind and the Martian surface.

Mars may or may not have a partially molten core, but even if it’s partially molten it’s not molten enough. In order to have a magnetic field on mars you’d have to melt the entire core somehow, and to do that from the outside you’d have to turn the whole planet molten again.

A magnetic field can be created by running electricity through a wire. All magnetic fields are created by moving charged particles. Even the magnet on your fridge is magnetic because it contains electrons that are constantly moving around inside.

Traditionally, magnetism is activated in an electromagnet by passing a current through a coil around a magnetic material. The new method uses a capacitor, a device used to generate an electric field, to control the magnetism of a magnetic material.

One way you can destroy a magnet’s magnetism is to heat it significantly. The magnet must be heated beyond what’s called the Curie point or Curie…

Cooling an ordinary magnet will not destroy its magnetism.

A: Yes, we definitely mean that heating up a magnet enough will destroy its magnetism, for the reasons described above. Cooling an ordinary magnet will not destroy its magnetism.

Demagnetisation is a slow process but magnets can lose their strength over time. This generally happens in two ways. So-called permanent magnets are constructed from materials made up of magnetic domains, in which atoms have electrons whose spins are aligned with each other.

Demagnetization processes include heating past the Curie point, applying a strong magnetic field, applying alternating current, or hammering the metal. Demagnetization occurs naturally over time.

All magnets can be demagnetized, and there are multiple ways to do that. There are a few ways to remove a magnetic field from a permanent magnet. One of these methods requires increasing the temperature of the magnet. Another way to make a magnet lose its magnetic field is by hitting it.