Paranormal? The restless compass needle

[Andres Ramos]

Some years ago i had a crush on making steampunk-like equipment. One of my first creations was a nice compass I made. It contained an iron wire with neodymium magnets on a low friction glass bearing and a nice scale. Everything was contained in a plexiglas sphere. OK, plexiglass is not really steampunk but the rest was made just of metal and wood.

My homemade steampunk compass

It was a really nice device and worked pretty well but one thing was disturbing. I observed that the compass needle never came to a rest - really never!

The restless needle

First I thought this could be due to environmental magnetic field caused by power supply lines. However power supply lines in europe allm are running with 50Hz AC, much too fast to follow for the needle that was wiggling around much slower. Then I thought it could be an overlay of different ac fields with a resulting beat frequency that was slow enough to deflect the needle. But this is also unlikely since every power line runs the same frequency of 50 Hz and they're all phase synchronized, even multiphase systems  have a constand differation angle between the phases, thus no interference could cause this effect.

OK, then it's mechanical vibrations of the building I guessed. Thus I ckecked the movement of the needle at different time points at day and night. It could be expected that at night the vibrations would be smaller when everyone sleeps in his bed and the traffic outside has stopped. But it made no difference. The needle kept moving. Then I placed the compass on a cushion and some folded blankets. This at least should diminish possible vibrations, but no effect, the needle was moving constantly.

Then I thought it could be influences from steel constructions and other magnetic materials in  the building itself. This of course is true but these inteferences are just causing constant deflections, they are adding a kind of "DC" offset that yields to a constant error of the needle but not a varying one.

Of course it might be possible that these deflections are caused by subtle changes of earths magnetic field and in fact this geomagnetic field is prone to changes permanently. However these are so small and subtle that you normally need a very sensitive fluxgate magnetometer to detect them and you can detect them just in magnetically quiet rural areas.

Thus I'm not sure if this effect is paranormal or not but it leaded me to the idea of an experiment. I would like to add a photoelectric barrier to the needle. The moving needle then shadows the light falling on the phototransistor more or less. Thus the tiny movements could be made measurable as a voltage signal for further investigations. Probably we could see if the deflections can be correlated with psychic events, moods or meditation.

Tell me your ideas please.

[Fernando Luis Cacciola Carballal]

Well, half way the story I was thinking that this is almost begging to be converted into a signal, but I didn't know how until I read the part about the barrier. That looks like a solid design to get a nice plot of the needle vibrations, so please do that. Once you can get a signal out of this, there are like limitless experiments to be done! I would start right off experimenting with the effect of people's energy on this.

[Andres Ramos]

2 hours ago, Fernando Luis Cacciola Carballal said:

Well, half way the story I was thinking that this is almost begging to be converted into a signal, but I didn't know how until I read the part about the barrier. That looks like a solid design to get a nice plot of the needle vibrations, so please do that. Once you can get a signal out of this, there are like limitless experiments to be done! I would start right off experimenting with the effect of people's energy on this.

At your command!

I got some of these fork light sensors.

Should be just perfect. I can easily hook it up to the compass.

[Christine Brooks]

If the needle moves according to the earth's magnetic field, then it is so.

1. There exists a theory and opinion that the earth has and will experience polar shifts. Now if the shift takes place on an infinitesimally minute scale over a thousand years or two, perhaps it has begun.  I swear the placement of the sunset and sunrise is not the same as it was even 10-12 years ago in my memory. Do I imagine this?

2. Do all compasses have this movement, perhaps some more apparent than others?

3. Oh, and one more thought- the end of the needle is red. Could there be a trace of iron element that causes an increased magnetic constant pulling to one of the metal nodes?

[Andres Ramos]

Good questions Chris! Last weekend if digged out the compass I made and placed it on my desk. In fact there was no observable movement of the needle anymore. It was weird since a year ago it was moving always. Maybe there were really disturbances of the magnetic field of the earth last year. There are station for geomagnetic survey in the internet. my idea is to wait until the next magnetic storm and look if the needle behaves the same way it did last year.

[Christine Brooks]

Great idea Andres!