Just seen your post for this blog and it sounds great! I do have a (maybe stupid) question: if a planet had five magnetic poles, what would it be like for organic life on that planet? Would they experience 'existence' differently than we do having only two poles? Or would it have no real impact until technology was involved? How might it impact (relatively) simple technology (i.e. about the level of early (1980/90/00s) computers/phones?) Thank you!
Now first of all, planets with multiple poles would probably have a fairly turbulent core as the poles come from swirling currents there. Also I don’t know how long these multiple poles would last, they would probably be fairly erratic. I mean, not like changing day to day but over the course of thousands of years they’d probably shift quite a bit and move around. Also, I’m not sure if five poles is really possible? it might have to have an even number though I cant really find anything that would say whether or not it really needs an even number. Magnets will have an even number of poles but because its not an actual magnet and just comes from the relationship of magnetic energy and electric energy, its hard to tell.
However, as to what you were asking about flora/fauna and technology, I don’t think it would affect animals too much. Our poles on earth randomly switch every couple hundred thousand years and the animals are definitely able to deal with it. A lot of animals do have some sort of way to sense magnetism and use it to navigate (like birds that fly south in winter etc). With five poles its hard to tell how organic life would adapt to it, and since having five poles means the poles would be relatively unstable in geological terms, I don’t really know if animals would have time to evolve to adapt some sort of magnetic sensory thing. However, if they did, they could probably still use it to navigate. Poles are either north or south, they either have field lines going toward them or going away from them. So as long as the animals were adapted to ‘know’ where each pole is and which type it is (subconsciously) then yes they probably could navigate by it. Basically, they either wouldn’t really have ways of detecting it, or they would and they’d be slightly more complex than our animals in order to compensate for the multiple poles and figuring out how to navigate by them.
With the multiple magnetic poles, the field might be more weak in some places. This would lead to more radiation from whatever sun coming in so that would probably affect everything on the planet, and animals would probably learn over generations to avoid those places.
As far as technology goes, obviously compasses would be the big thing that is changed. Since there are five poles, meaning multiple norths and souths, using a compass could be hard as it might kind of spin unless you’re quite a bit closer to one pole than the other. This would make early navigation a bit harder so I’m guessing people on this planet would start using the stars more than compasses. Once we get to the level of computers and satellites and stuff, that’s different. Computers are generally better at figuring this kind of stuff out than a human with a compass so I’m guessing phone navigation systems could use the magnetic field a bit though once satellites come into play, a lot of it is just satellites. Not much of our tech would be affected by five poles if it had been built with five poles in mind. Obviously it would have to be different than ours but not too different.
If the poles fluctuated, they’d have to be more robust to deal with solar radiation that comes from the fluctuation, but thats about it.
