If explorers did go to the North Pole like they say they did, how would they know if they made it to the spot?

Question

If it's true they did make it, what did they do or use to know they reached the actual area.

Answer 1

Navigational technology (things like the sextant) made it possible to accurately determine one's position on the globe, and so people who actually did make it to the North Pole were pretty certain that they were there. Today, we can simply use GPS. While the North Pole is technically in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, it is covered in shifting ice, and expeditions have been made there directly on dogsled.

One sure way to tell you are at the North Pole: Because of the Earth's tilt, the North and South Pole only have one sunrise and one sunset each year. 24 hours of light each day in the summer, 24 hours of dark each day in the winter (and vice versa for the South Pole).

Answer 2

That's a very good question. The compass itself will be definitely unreliable. A compass points to the Magnetic North Pole (somewhere in Canada, miles away from the geographic North Pole).

I do not really know how they figured out that they're onthe geographic north pole. I think that with today's modern technology, scientists and explorers will be able to accurately identify the "exact" spot of the geographic north pole.

Answer 3

the magnetic pole can be easily found by using a compass until it starts spinning, as for the geographic pole, they probably use GPS systems now-a-days, but before that, I assume that it was just guessing...

btw, did you know that the magnetic poles are constantly moving?

Answer 4

their compas would go all wacky at the magnetic NP

Answer 5

probably by the way a compass needle would react!!!