Weekend Reads 2/16/19

Earth's Magnetic North Pole May Have Just Officially Shifted

Because the magnetic north pole moves about 55 kilometers (34 miles) each year, governing agencies release updates to the model every five years. The most recent update wasn’t due until the end of this year, but unplanned variations in the Arctic region have spurred authorities to push for a new update sooner than planned.

The Dark Side of Original Thinking

McLaren proposed that creativity had a dark side, and that viewing it without a social or moral lens would lead to limited understanding. As time went on, newer concepts—negative and malevolent creativity—included conceiving original ways to cheat on tests or doing purposeful harm to others: for instance, innovating new ways to execute terrorist attacks.

If Pelosi Is Guilty, So’s Jesus

There are numerous examples of misquotations of scripture from the Hebrew Bible in the Christian scriptures. For example, in a dramatic scene in the Gospel of John, Jesus cries out in the temple in Jerusalem, “If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”

Wayward Satellites Test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

Even after the Galileo satellites were nudged closer to circular orbits, they were still climbing and falling about 8,500 kilometers twice a day. Over the course of three years Delva’s and Herrmann’s teams watched how the resulting shifts in gravity altered the frequency of the satellites’ superaccurate atomic clocks.