Physicist claims the North Pole is now moving, and we don’t know why or where it’s going

The North Pole most people picture on a globe is staying put, but according to theoretical physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder, the other North Pole – the magnetic one – is doing something far stranger.

In a recent video, Hossenfelder explained that Earth’s magnetic north pole has been moving rapidly for years, and while scientists have some decent ideas about what may be driving it, they still do not know exactly why it sped up, why it shifted the way it did, or what it is going to do next. That uncertainty matters more than it might sound at first, because this is not just some quirky fact for geophysicists. Modern navigation systems, commercial aviation, shipping, drilling operations, and even some military systems depend on magnetic models staying accurate.

That is what makes the story so compelling.

A moving magnetic pole sounds like one of those scientific curiosities that is fun at parties and irrelevant everywhere else. But Hossenfelder makes clear that this one reaches into practical life, and the fact that scientists are still partly in the dark gives the whole issue a quietly unsettling edge.

There Are Two North Poles, and Only One Is Misbehaving

Sabine Hossenfelder begins by drawing a distinction that many people probably do not think about very often.

Strictly speaking, Earth has two North Poles. One is the geographic North Pole, which is defined by Earth’s rotational axis, the same one shown on globes and world maps. That North Pole is not wandering off anywhere. It stays where it is because it is tied to the planet’s rotation.

The other one is the magnetic North Pole.

That is the northern end of Earth’s magnetic field, the point compass systems are concerned with, and that is the one Hossenfelder says has become increasingly unpredictable. For a long time, the geographic and magnetic poles were close enough that the idea of “north” felt stable and simple.

That is no longer quite true.

According to Hossenfelder, the magnetic north pole spent about 400 years drifting slowly around northern Canada at a speed of roughly 5 to 10 kilometers per year. Then, in the late 1990s, something changed. The pace increased sharply, and by the early 2000s the pole was moving at speeds of up to 50 kilometers per year toward Siberia.

That is fast enough to stop being a footnote.

Why This Is Not Just an Obscure Science Problem

One of the most useful things Hossenfelder does in her explanation is stress that tracking the magnetic pole is not just an academic hobby.

The magnetic north pole is used in systems that need directional accuracy, and when it moves too quickly, the models that rely on it have to be updated more often. Hossenfelder points to the World Magnetic Model, which is maintained by NOAA and the British Geological Survey and is used by militaries, airlines, shipping firms, satellites, and oil and gas companies.

That last category may surprise some people, but it makes sense once she explains it.

Oil and gas companies need to know the precise direction of drilling, and even a tiny angle error can turn into a major offset deep underground. One way they avoid that problem is by tracking the magnetic field carefully, which means they need up-to-date magnetic data when the field changes.

Hossenfelder’s joke that “north” has become a subscription service with regular updates is funny because it is close to the truth.

The World Magnetic Model used to be updated every five years, but in 2019 scientists had to issue an out-of-cycle update because the magnetic field was drifting too fast for the older model to remain accurate enough. She notes that the newest version came out only recently and even includes a higher-resolution option, which gives a sense of how much more complicated this has become.

In other words, this is not just a map issue. It is an infrastructure issue.

Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Also Weakening

The moving pole is not the only thing that caught Hossenfelder’s attention.

She says scientists have also found that the overall strength of Earth’s magnetic field has declined by roughly 10 percent over the past two centuries. That does not mean the field is disappearing tomorrow, and she is careful not to overstate the case, but it does add another layer of uncertainty to the picture.

Then there is the South Atlantic Anomaly.

Hossenfelder points to that region as one area where the field is behaving especially oddly. Over the South Atlantic, the magnetic field is unusually weak, which has made the anomaly an area of growing interest and concern. On its own, one weak patch might not sound like a global story, but taken together with the wandering pole and the long-term weakening, it begins to look like part of a broader pattern that scientists are still trying to interpret.

That is where the story gets more unsettling.

Not because the evidence proves a catastrophe is imminent, but because the planet’s magnetic system appears to be doing several unusual things at once, and the experts still cannot fully explain how those pieces fit together.

The Best Explanation Lives Deep Underground

So what is driving all of this?

Hossenfelder says the best current explanation is that things are shifting underground more than they used to, specifically in Earth’s outer core, some 2,000 kilometers beneath the surface. Down there sits a vast ocean of molten iron and nickel at extremely high temperatures. Because that material conducts electricity and moves, it generates electric currents, and those currents create magnetic fields.

That whole process is known as the geodynamo.

In broad terms, the idea is straightforward enough: moving conductive fluid inside a rotating planet creates magnetism. But as Hossenfelder quickly points out, the details are far from simple. Scientists are dealing with turbulent fluid motion inside a spherical shell under extreme conditions, and they cannot directly observe that flow.

They can only infer it.

What researchers can do is reconstruct likely patterns based on measurements of the magnetic field at Earth’s surface, gravity data, earthquake information, and other indirect clues. From that work, Hossenfelder says, scientists have concluded that there are not just one but two bundled regions of magnetic “north” influence — one under Canada and another under Siberia.

That turns out to matter a lot.

Over the past few decades, she says, the Canadian region has weakened while the Siberian region has strengthened. That shift appears to be the main reason the magnetic north pole has moved toward Siberia. So scientists do have a working explanation for the direction of motion.

What they do not have is a full explanation for why those subsurface changes are happening now.

Is Earth Headed for a Magnetic Reversal?

This is the question that naturally hangs over any discussion of magnetic weirdness, and Hossenfelder addresses it directly.

Earth’s magnetic field has reversed many times in the distant past, with north and south flipping places over geological timescales. We know that from the rock record. So when the pole starts moving quickly, the field weakens, and anomalies grow, people understandably wonder whether another reversal is beginning.

Hossenfelder’s answer is cautious.

She says there is no indication right now that Earth’s magnetic field is definitely about to reverse. Scientists know reversals have happened hundreds of times before, but they do not have enough detailed historical data to say with confidence whether the current behavior is unusually alarming or simply part of the range of natural variability.

That is a frustrating answer, but also an honest one.

A full magnetic reversal, if it did happen, could weaken Earth’s protection against cosmic radiation for a long period, potentially thousands of years. That sounds dramatic, and it is, but Hossenfelder does not present it as an imminent threat. She presents it as one of the larger worries in the background, something scientists are aware of without being able to pin the current observations neatly to that outcome.

That uncertainty is probably the most important part of the whole discussion.

Scientists Know More Than Before – But Not Enough

The real takeaway from Hossenfelder’s video is not that scientists are clueless.

It is that they know enough to describe the problem, enough to update the models, enough to reconstruct broad changes in the field, and enough to identify likely mechanisms in the outer core. But they still do not know enough to answer the two questions most people immediately want answered: why is this happening now, and where exactly is it heading next?

That gap between measurement and explanation is what gives the story its tension.

Science is often strongest when it can confidently say what is happening but not yet fully explain why. The magnetic north pole is moving. It sped up. It shifted toward Siberia. The global field has weakened over time. The South Atlantic Anomaly exists. Those are not guesses.

What remains unclear is how those pieces connect beneath the surface, and whether the current behavior is a prelude to something larger or simply one more episode in a deep geophysical system that has always been more dynamic than most people realized.

That makes this one of those stories that is both practical and philosophical.

It affects navigation and technology now, but it also reminds us that even the planet’s most basic seeming features – like north – are not as fixed as we once liked to imagine. As Hossenfelder puts it, maybe in a few decades we will no longer head north, but toward the place formerly known as north.