Also does anyone know how those ultra strong magnets are affecting our planet if at all?
Edit: sorry the [link](https://imamagnets.com/en/blog/what-is-most-powerful-magnet/#:~:text=The%20world’s%20most%20powerful%20magnet%20is%2044.14%20Teslas.&text=This%20super%20magnet%20has%20a,we%20find%20in%20a%20hospital) says 900,000 times the earths magnetism
Edit 2: Thank you wonderful people for clearing that up. Your minor support did more for my mental health than you realize not just for the knowledge but also the general support from the community. Y’all are amazing.
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I watched a video today about ships compasses. And how they need to counteract the magnetism of a giant steel ship to be accurate.
[check out this Veritasium video on the world’s strongest magnet](https://youtu.be/g0amdIcZt5I?si=_2k2o8R73yLNhibE)
Eagle eyes are the sharpest eyes of all the animals why can’t eagle eyes see all the other eyes?
The magnet in the link looks like it’s about 1 meter tall. For the sake of simplicity let’s assume it is a 2 meter diameter sphere.
Magnetism changes with the cube of distance. So measuring 1 meter away from the center is 1000x less powerful than 100 cm from the center.
The earth’s radius is ~6,300,000 meters (6,300 km). This is 6 orders of magnitude to 1 meter. If you check the above line that means at 1 meter we would just divide the field strength by a number with **eighteen** zeros. OP’s edited number has 5 zeros.
Thus, using orders of magnitude we can quickly determine the Earth’s magnetic field is about *10,000,000,000,000x* stronger than this magnet at about 1 meter if it were replaced with a single point.
While others explained the difference in field pretty well, another thing to keep in mind is that the “magnet” generating the earths magnetic field is the molten core of the planet. That is the comparison that should be kept in mind, we just happen to be much farther away from it so the scale doesn’t seem as obvious.
There is a difference between total magnetic flux, and magnetic flux density.
High strength magnets in things like MRI machines have very “dense” (strong) magnetic fields. They have lots of flux through a small cross section. But they are still small compared to the Earth, so the field strength drops over a short distance.
The Earth has a comparatively weak magnetic field. There is very little flux through any similarly sized cross sectional area. But the Earth is much bigger, so the strength drops off over a much longer distance scale.
To really understand why/how field strength decreases with distance, you need to understand maxwell’s equations, which needs some calculus (divergence and curl) to get a good intuition for the shapes of electromagnetic fields.
I have heard that there are some hills in Scotland that have enough magnetism to attract a compass needle so hillwalkers need to be wary of that.
Mass.
The core of the planet has much more mass than a magnet. So it makes a bigger field than even the strongest man-made magnet.
Think of energy or magnetism like candy bars. If you have one magnet / candy bar and you get so close to it with a microscope….it might look like a giant candy bar.
But then the earth showsn up with a pillowcase full of candy bars. Doesn’t matter they’re the small fun size there’s still a ton of them.
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