Losing North
When things don’t makes sense, when what you thought right is wrong, when all reference points have shifted resulting in a general confusion - the French say: “Le Nord est Perdu”. To the argonauts of the Arctic hemisphere, the North Star is a guide. But, it is a successive position. The usual shifting of the Earth’s axis points to a different star every couple of thousand of years.
In the case of the earth, precession is caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. The earth’s axis makes one complete rotation over the course of approximately 26,000 years. If you trace the path of the axis in the sky, you will find that Polaris, Vega, Thuban, and Alpha Cephei all fall on or very close to it. So when the earth’s axis is at a point on the path near Vega, Vega becomes the North Star while Thuban is the North Star when the axis is near it on the path. Five thousand years ago, Thuban was the North Star. Five thousand years from now, the North Star will be Alpha Cephei. Seven thousand years after that, it will be Vega…
That is of course, if our Earth isn’t in the early stages of a Magnetic Reversal .
As a matter of geological record, the Earth’s magnetic field has undergone numerous reversals of polarity. We can see this in the magnetic patterns found in volcanic rocks, especially those recovered from the ocean floors. In the last 10 million years, there have been, on average, 4 or 5 reversals per million years. At other times in Earth’s history, for example during the Cretaceous era, there have been much longer periods when no reversals occurred. Reversals are not predictable and are certainly not periodic in nature. Hence we can only speak about the average reversal interval.
Certainty, or positive affirmation of any kind seems unattainable in a world where Ying and Yang are not only in constant flux, but worse - are perfectly interchangeable. So… which way Is North?