Magnetic Dip

A magnetic compass is less usable near the poles partly due to magnetic dip. One of the Earth’s poles is much closer and affects the needle more strongly than the other pole. As a result, Earth’s magnetic field pulls the needle toward the ground.

Flat-Earthers claim that a compass is unusable only near Antarctica. In reality, the same also occurs near the North Pole. Magnetic dip, as observed on various locations on Earth, can only happen if the Earth is spherical.

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Sun Compass and Richard E. Byrd’s Flight Toward the North Pole

In 1926, Richard E. Byrd flew near the North Pole and used a sun compass for navigation. A regular magnetic compass is less usable near the poles because it points toward the magnetic pole, which is different from the geographic pole, and that the needle will point toward the ground due to the magnetic dip.

Flat-Earthers are too fixated on the stories about Richard E. Byrd’s compass being unusable in Antarctica and use it as “evidence” of flat Earth, as if it only happens in Antarctica. They failed to realize that the same thing also occurs near the North Pole, and Richard E. Byrd himself also prepared for it.

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Antarctic Ice Domes: Not The Dome That is Supposedly Enclosing the Earth

An ice dome is one of many forms a glacier can take. It is an upright ice surface in the higher altitude portions of an ice cap or an ice sheet. There are many such features found on icy terrain. And Antarctica is no exception.

When an ice dome gets mentioned, flat-Earthers often confuse it with the mythical dome enclosing the Earth as described in most flat Earth model. No such dome actually exists.

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Admiral Byrd: “An Area As Big As The United States on the Other Side of the South Pole”

According most flat earthers, there’s no such thing as the continent of Antarctica. In their imagination, Antarctica is not a continent, but  a long ice wall enclosing the Earth. Without having anything to prove that assumption, they look anywhere for any quote they can mine and stumbled into this quote by Admiral Byrd:

“Strangely enough, there is left in the world today, an area as big as the United States, that’s never been seen by a human being. And that’s beyond the pole, on the other side of the south pole from Little America.”

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