The affects are expected to be felt today, with heightened geomagnetic activity being predicted over the next few days.

Such is the case with the Earth's magnetic field. Every so often, our planet's magnetic poles reverse polarity (see When Compasses Point South). Compass needles have always pointed north ...

Satellites passing through this area often experience malfunctions, with systems crashing, data corruption, and equipment failure.

As the time line at right shows, hundreds of times in our planet's history the polarity of the magnetic shield ensheathing the globe has gone from "normal," our current orientation to the north ...

As there-could be no magic in the case, it appeared that the balance had magnetic polarity, as no other cause could produce the effect I had witnessed, and which was repeated as often as I chose ...

But now it works great, and [EmGi] even deposited an array of 64 magnets without using glue to test it out before printing a second one to handle the other polarity. Check out the build/demo video ...

The Northern Lights covered parts of the UK last night, leaving Brits reaching for their cameras. Images show the aurora ...