North Pole, South Pole

The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism

By: Gillian Turner

Narrated by: Cat Gould

"This "fantastic story" of one of physics' great riddles takes us through centuries of scientific history (Simon Lamb, author of Devil in the Mountain).

Why do compass needles point north - but not quite north? What guides the migration of birds, whales, and fish across the world's oceans? How is Earth able to sustain life under an onslaught of solar wind and cosmic radiation? For centuries, the world's great scientists have grappled with these questions, all rooted in the same phenomenon: Earth's magnetism.

Over 2000 years after the invention of the compass, Einstein called the source of Earth's magnetic field one of greatest unsolved mysteries of physics. Here, for the first time, is the complete history of the quest to understand the planet's attractive pull-from the ancient Greeks' fascination with lodestone to the geological discovery that the North Pole has not always been in the North-and to the astonishing modern conclusions that finally revealed the true source. Skillfully told, North Pole, South Pole unfolds the human story behind the science: that of the inquisitive, persevering, and often dissenting thinkers who unlocked the secrets at our planet's core.

©2010, 2011 Gillian Turner (P)2019 Tantor

Geo Dynamo

Excellent narration and written structure. Explaining that experimentation enhanced the knowledge, building models used today.

Draw to the Attraction!

A story of history and current standings of earths magnetic fields. History of our discoveries and who discovered them, a brief introduction to electromagnetic forces and rapped up with a brief current status if you will of today’s magnetic field. Another chapter on this would have been great but the story ended well enough.

Attractive science writing

From aurora borealis to plate tectonics to Faraday and Maxwell, this book makes interesting connections with magnetism. The narration is also at a nice pace for this topic.

Amazing story of the science and history of earth’s magnetics

After being led down a rabbit hole of recommended reading by Elon Musk and completing the foundation series, by Issac Asimov, I began searching for a book about magnetics, but in particular, earth’s magnetic poles. That is how I came to find this gem of a book.

You will indeed gain a great history lesson from this, and learn just how much the study of earth’s magnetic fields has influenced where we are, technologically, and where we are going.

Surprisingly, there are very few audio books that focus on this topic, so I can only hope that Gillian Turner will decide to write a sequel to carry on from where she left.

This book is seriously so cool...

Magnetic History

This is an interesting history on how magnetic theory and the Earth’s magnetic field was discovered and evolved. Pretty deep stuff, but interesting listening. If I was reading this on paper, I would spend so much time flipping back back-and-forth and hopefully looking at illustrations and diagrams to follow along. Just one of the downfalls of books on tape with nothing to look at.