Subject: (urth) What On Urth Would You Do With Monopoles if You Had'em, Anyway?

From: Mitchell A. Bailey <mab at lindau.net>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 14:24:07 +0000

Furthermore, regarding use of monopoles and interactions w/ Urth's
alleged magnetic field - rising above the trees to see the forest...

Back when I first started posting, I posed a question about examples of
the use of magnetic compasses on Urth. I couldn't find any. Most of the
navigation potrayed for us takes place on Gyoll, a river channel, where
a compass would be of limited use anyway. The exception was Eata sailing
on the new ocean of Ushas, upon which he was lost regardless. Navigation
on the open ocean of Urth I suppose could be accomplished in the absence
of magentic compasses by celestial sightings or the Polynesian method,
by which adepts actually read the wave patterns. Or maybe a GPS network
of some kind still exists. Eata and the other sailors never to my
recollection make any reference whatsoever to the use of magnetic
compasses.

Then there is that story "The Tale of the Student and His Son". You
would think that a compass would have been a salvation in the channels
of Ogre's Isle, yet no use was made of one. However, when the ship was
given a directional datum (the flights of birds), it was soon able to
reach its destination.

(Awright Bailey, what's your point?!) My point is that Urth should have
little or no discernable magnetic field, and this seems borne out
empirically by the text.

It is widely accepted that Earth's magentic field is generated by the
currents induced in its core of molten iron and nickel by rotation and
convection. Urth is said to have nearly solidified through to the extent
that plate tectonics and volcanism have ceased and the crust has
shrunken. Urth presumably would have less of a magnetic field than
Mars-er Verthandi. So I have to wonder how much good any levitation
method which relies on interaction with Urth's magnetic field might be?

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