The compass will point 'true north' for the first time in 360 years

In September 2019, for the first time in a few hundred years, the compass points to the true North. Scientists claim this is an extremely rare event.

If you think your compass was pointing you "really north" , unfortunately, that would be wrong.

In fact, the needle on a compass constantly oscillates between the true north and the magnetic north, due to the fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field.

However, at some point in September, the compass in Greenwich, England, will first face the most accurate north in about 360 years. For some parts of the United Kingdom, this may not happen in 20 years.

For the past few hundred years in England, the angle between the true north and the magnetic north has been called attenuation . This also means that all compasses are not pointing to the West.

The Royal Greenwich Observatory has been tracking the decline since 1840, using the dedicated magnetic observatory.

"This marks the first time since the creation of an observatory of geographic and magnetic coordination systems that coincided at this site," said Dr Ciaran Beggan, a geoscientist at the Lyell Center. of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, said.