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The direction that compass needles point is known as the magnetic north pole. This is distinct from the geographic north pole, often known as "True North," which is a fixed location where all longitude lines cross and which acts as the axis of rotation for the Earth.
Deep beneath our globe, some 2,000 miles below the surface, is the secret of this enigmatic movement. "The magnetic poles shift because the magnetic field is an actively generated feature of our planet—the outer core," William Brown, a geomagnetism researcher at the British Geological Survey (BGS), told Newsweek.