Earliest records show a spoon shaped compass made of lodestone or magnetite ore, referred to as a "South-pointer" dating back to sometime during the Han Dynasty (2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE).

If all the compasses in the world started pointing south rather than north, many people might think something very strange, very unusual, and possibly very dangerous was going on. Doomsayers would ...

Until the arrival of GPS, the magnetic compass was the single most useful navigational tool available to humans. But it’s a recent invention. Although Chinese explorers understood the principles of ...

THE subject of this lecture is the gyrostatic compass, often called the gyro-compass. An engineer of my acquaintance was asked if he under-stood what a gyro-compass was, and he replied, “Of ...

The planet's magnetic North Pole, where compasses point, has been unexpectedly moving toward Russia. While shifting is not a rare occurrence, the pole is moving both faster and differently than it ...

Magnetotactic bacteria synthesize magnetic iron nanominerals, which function as tiny compasses that allow the microbes to navigate using Earth's geomagnetic field. Earth's iron cycle is a very ...